Left-over red wine: Braised Root Veggies and Pioneer Woman Tomato-Chicken

Happy new year to all! We had a quiet, home-made dinner and a DVD date (very sad the "Love Actually" type "New Year's Eve" movie that came out last year was not available cheaply on any of the streaming services or Redbox kiosks. They all wanted $10. Instead Lord of the Rings second movie.) This resulted in a headache the next morning and leftover red wine since only one of us was drinking.

What to do with the wine that would clearly not be sipped in a glass? I asked my trusty fellow recipe finding friend, who shot me not one but six recipes she thought might be worthy. I chose two of these. Given it's "cold" here in San Diego (reaching the 40s at night) I wanted to use the oven. The chicken tomato entree she had tried (and that one is here!) and other is a deeply flavored, vegan pleasing dish that just worked wonderfully with the bounty of winter root veggies in the CSA box. You pair the recipes with a grain or pasta to soak up the delicious sauces. I ate them together on the same plate with  rice.

You can use whatever root veggies you have or like. Just add it up to 2lbs (strongly recommend getting a scale if you don't have one, it helps give you flexibility when you interchange vegetables for same weight or in gluten free ratio baking... but I also tried to note number of vegetables I used in case you can't get your hands on one.)

WARNING: if making these dishes together, do on an afternoon or early evening when you have plenty of time.  All together with prep and cooking, I jammed in the kitchen for 2.5 hours. Once the chicken goes in, you'll be free for an hour. I opted for something silly to kill time, the Carrie Diaries. You might be able to do the prep faster if you have a helper of course! Anyways, it's not always practical to cook this long but if you want to indulge yourself or make something nice for guests, go for this!

Wine-Braised Root Veggie from Eating Well

2lbs root veggies: It still looks like 6-8 x 1 cup servings!

2 russet potatoes

1 fennel and stems (save leaves for later use, perhaps the chicken recipe)

4 x 6” carrots

2 watermelon (milder, not as spicy) radishes-they looked about billiard ball sized

¾ cup red wine (I tried Zinfandel)

4 oz dried mushroom (I used shiitake mushrooms (about 5 x 1” diameter dried))

8 oz white mushrooms (halved if large)

2 bay leaves

2 tbsp fresh oregano or 2 tsp dried herb* (original recipe was thyme)

½ tsp salt

1/8 tsp ground pepper

2 cups broth (couldn’t find mushroom broth called for,so using veg bouillon cube)

Tools to get out: 13 x 9 pan. Cutting board. Small pot to heat up wine and dried mushrooms.

    Preheat oven to 350

Heat the wine until steaming in the small pot. Remove from heat and add dried mushrooms.

     The original recipe notes you can peel the root veggies. I didn’t bother as I use my organic CSA box, so I just scrub the veggies to remove dirt and leave the peels on. It cooks so long the vegetables are tender even with skins. For oblong root veggies cut into 3” pieces, for round roots cut into 1” wedges. Wash the mushrooms and place them along with the roots into the 9x13 pan. 

    Strain wine into a mixing bowl/measuring cup. Set mushroom aside to chop up and add with rest of veggies. To the wine mix in and whisk oregano or other herb, tomato paste, salt and pepper. Pour over veggies. Add broth, bay leaves and garlic cloves.

Cook covered with foil at 350 for 45 minutes. Then uncover and cook 1 hr more (see steps below if making with chicken)

Pioneer Woman's Tomato Chicken over Grains/Pasta

4- 6 servings

While your root veggies cook, start on the chicken. Only a few substitutions from Pioneer Woman’s recipe. I used more olive oil instead of butter and instead of canned tomato, used fresh tomato. If you want to see some drool worthy pictures go to her website, step by step!

• 8 pieces Chicken Legs Or Thighs
• Salt And Pepper, to taste
• 3-4 Tablespoons Olive Oil
• 3 lbs fresh tomato (about 6 reg round tomatoes)
• 2 Tablespoons (Heaping) Tomato Paste
• Fresh herbs: gave fennel leaves a try!
• 8 cloves Garlic
• Cooked pasta (16oz) or rice or quinoa to soak up the tomato sauce
• Grated Parmesan Cheese, For Serving (optional)
• 1/2 cup White Wine (or Red Wine)

Tools: dutch oven or stir-fry pan + 2 glass baking dishes, tongs to turn chicken, 

     If you have an oven proof pan or dutch oven use this, if not grab your stir-fry sized pan and heat oil in it. I had to do my chicken in two batches so use half the oil in each batch if this is your situation too. Salt and Pepper your chicken. I had leftover Paula Deene seasoning* so I used this instead. 

   Turn on your stove top fan. While waiting for the oil to heat, peel the skin off the cloves of garlic. Begin chopping tomatoes if using fresh.

  On med-high brown the chicken on all sides (about 2 minutes). 

   While the chicken browns (btwn flips), you can continue chopping the tomatoes. Measure out your wine also.

 If not an oven proof dish, move your browned chicken into baking pans. I used 2 9x11 inch pans.

 You’re going to make the sauce now. Keep the heat on, add the wine to the pan used to brown the chicken to get the tasty scrapings. Then add the tomato paste and tomatoes to that pan. Bring to a boil

While waiting for the sauce to boil, chop up your herbs & start doing some of your dishes unless you’re lucky enough to have a helper!

 Remove tomato-wine sauce from heat. Then add to the pans of chicken. Cover with foil. 

 If making with the wine-root veggies, uncover the wine-root veggies at their 45 minute mark and kick the oven up to 400F.  Add the chicken drumsticks and bake for 1 hour. Continue to stir the root veggies periodically during the cooking.

Paula Deene seasoning:

1 cup salt
1/4 cup black pepper
1/4 cup garlic powder

What kind of food/health goals do you have this year? I would like to do a 5-10 post theme, pair trying a new restaurant with looking for cool local shops and give HIIT a try to refresh my exercise routine. Dave would like to give up sugar for a year but I asked him to wait until after his birthday. Not that I HAVE to join him, but it'd be helpful to break my sweet tooth for awhile (feeling sluggish even after enough sleep). I'd have to modify and keep honey/coconut sugar/maple syrup in for my oatmeal.

Spunky Grapefruit Dressing for a Savory Salad (Veganizable, No Dairy, No soy)

As much as I had wanted a support group to do detoxing with, the yoga studio has the juicing cleanse right in the midst of my National Parks Trip. No practical way to do juicing staying in hotels and out hiking all day. So I'm going to try out a shorter, different detox from past years (Master cleanse, master cleanse + 2 juicing meals) starting tomorrow.  But first, I had to start by eating my way through items that won't keep for 8 days.

I had some defrosted shrimp to use up (checked country/method of harvesting for sustainability at store using the Monterey Bay Aquarium App-finally there are some "good alternative" options beside Oregon Pink shrimp!) and swapped that for the smoked tofu called for in Post-punk Kitchen's Vietnamese inspired Rice Noodle Salad with Grapefruit Vinegrette. It may seem an odd combination garlic, grapefruit, Sriracha (that bright red sauce at Vietnamese joints, usually with a rooster on the bottle), but give it a taste before dismissing it. Wakes me up at lunch time with it's bright, bold taste. The color chirps cheerily as well, like a sherbert! Tip for those not big on ginger: Personally felt the flavors of the dressing were 10x better the next day (ginger had time to mellow out). If you liked konnyaku from my chicken soup post, I used it again as part of the salad ingredients to give me more textures since I was omitting noodles. The Post Punk Kitchen gives even more substitution ideas for the salad ingredients.

Dressing Ingredients (for about 4-5 servings; I used about 3 tbsp each time)-barely any tweaks from me here

1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon fresh ginger
3/4 cup fresh red yellow grapefruit juice (this was about 1.5 fruits for me)
2 tablespoons grapeseed oil  olive oil
2 tablespoons Sriracha
2 teaspoons dijon mustard
2 teaspoons rice wine vinegar
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon agave nectar  honey
1/4 teaspoon salt

Put all ingredients in a blender and whirl until smooth. Best served chilled.

 Salad Ingredients (one serving)-endless possibilities to use what veggies or protein forms you have on hand...if you want more of the Vietnamese influence, add some chopped mint or the purple basil, cucumbers (not in season here in SD yet), thinly sliced carrots strips, the mung bean spouts.

(this is the serving portion, but save time by cooking all your shrimp and panfried stuff at once)

-9  cooked shrimp 41/50 count (about 3-4 oz cooked weight)
-1/3 block sliced  konnyaku and 1/2 cup sliced squash strips (pan fried with coconut aminos, sesame oil and coconut sugar)
-1/4 cup or small handful sundried tomato strips
-1/2 grapefruit-cut into segments
-1.5 cups rinsed/chopped lettuce
-2 tbsp chopped fresh herb (basil was delish)
-1 tbsp "sawdust" (bonito flakes)



1. If using shrimp, you need to peel and deveine your shrimp do so first.

2. Get a pot of water boiling for the shrimp. The 41/50 count size I left in for about 3 minutes once the water boiled so it cooked but not to the point of becoming tough.  Shrimp will turn pink almost immediately, watch for it go from translucent to opaque.

3. Heat a frying pan with 1 tsp sesame oil. Rinse off and slice your konnyaku block into strips (see picture) and slice up your squash. Add strips to the pan. Add a few shakes of coconut aminos (or soy sauce if you wheat and soy) and sprinkle 1-2 tsp coconut sugar. Cook until squash is tender.

4. Mix your cooked ingredients with the grapefruit, lettuce and tomato. Top with the dressing and serve warm.


What perks you up at a mid-day slump at work? Is it food related?

Testing the Vegan Tamales Dough-and using leftover rice!

Previously, I listed tamales as a possible to use root tops in place of spinach. And last year I tested a vegetarian (uses butter) tamale recipe for black eyed peas.  Well, I got around to testing the vegan version this weekend as part of my detox. It was a success and no heavy feeling stomach from dairy!

In general was fearful of making tamales for the longest time until I went to the San Diego Fair a few years ago and watched a cooking demo. I had heard that people would get the whole family together at Christmas time doing an all day assembly line gave me the impression of it being labor intensive. But I think families make tamales for the season and freeze them or give them away. It also seems like a big social event for them.

I tend to make in batches of a dozen or two so I can make them solo and just spend an afternoon doing it. However, I could see myself having a tamale making party with friends and family. Perhaps a birthday gathering idea for 2013! Love that tamales are versatile, like pizzas, sushi, burritos...you can try putting whatever you have on hand, if you don't care about being traditional.

 The recipe I came upon also suggested a sweet filling of pumpkin/squash and rice with cinnamon. I had ingredients for both versions, so why not test them at the same time if I'm already messing up the kitchen (I decided if I could wish for anything for the kitchen, I want a robot that washes hand-wash dishes for me...I don't mind doing cooking, but time spent with soap and water tempts me to eat out). The big  plus of the sweet variation is I found another use for leftover rice besides fried rice or rice pudding (not sure if a vegan version would be successful-can't use egg replacer as it contains soy).

The recipe from Squiddoo.

Supposed to yield 4 dozen, I guess I put a lot of dough on mine or I like to cover the filling up a little more, it looks like my batch is only going to make 20...

For the dough, mix together

• 4 cups masa harina
• 3 cups vegetable broth
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

For the sweet filling mix together

• 1 cup cooked/mashed squash, pumpkin or sweet potato
• 1 cup rice (I used a defrosted batch)
• cinnamon or pumpkin pie spices to taste
• 2 tbsp maple syrup

For savory filling-Root tops OR kidney beans

• radish and turnip greens from about 12 roots)-rinsed well, chopped and steamed or sauteed with garlic (can use garlic powder if no fresh)-cooked down it looked like about 1-1.5 cups.
• garlic minced or garlic powder to taste

• Kidney bean version-soaked 1 cup of dried beans overnight and simmered on medium 35 minutes, then mash slightly
•  Add a salsa or taco sauce for flavor. I did La Victoria Green taco sauce.

Mix all dough ingredients in a medium bowl. Since I used homemade veggie stock, I added 1 tsp of salt instead of 1/4 tsp. The dough should hold it's shape when handled and not be sticky.

 Make the dough into balls-mine end up being about 1.5 times the size of a golf ball...maybe slightly smaller than a racquetball (not sure how many of you play racquetball)

Spread the dough into a square-ish shape in the husk. I used my palm but there is a spreader as I learned on Gourmet Sleuth. There should be about 1.5" above and below the dough to leave room for tying shut. Place 1.5 tbsp of fill in the center of the dough. 

Fold left and right side of the husk together so the dough meets. To shut the husk, you could just twist the top and bottom like the hard candy wrappers (shown on Squidoo's pics).. but.because I have a small steamer, I fold down the top and bottom and then put the corn husk strip tie around it (see picture below, the one on the right side stayed shut).

Steam about 2" of water on medium-low heat for 45 minutes. Check halfway through to make sure there is enough water.

"Tannenbaum" (Rosemary-lime) Dressing/Sauce

Apparently we can't have a Christmas tree of any kind (even plastic), as Dave's feelings of pines is tainted from his roommate experience of a bug-infested tree a few years ago. They smell so nice though, see how happy it made us girls!

I don't know about you but I could use more time this month (still two more people to shop for and haven't gotten the cards written yet). So during the busy-holiday (and other crunch times) I think the most useful recipes are sauces, because you can just try them on anything after their original recipe.  Like this dressing recipe from Food.com I tried at my folk's place after I saw they had a giant bag of limes from Costco with the green beans as originally meant.

Side-tangent, but speaking of Costco, on trip last week, at the Mission Valley location, I noticed they started carrying Rudi's gluten free bread in the fridge/freezer section. I don't think it is dairy free, and like Udi's, they use sunflower/safflower oil which won't work when I start the detox. But gf bread that you can eat without toasting is like a Christmas miracle. Also in the fridge section I spied some gluten-free, dairy free pre-made cookie dough! (it did have soy).

 A week after coming back from my visit with mom and pop, my co-worker had filled the basket near her cube with limes.  Recipe re-cycle time! Instead of basil, I ended up using about 1/4 cup of the rinsed leaves from fresh Christmas-tree like rosemary (did you know you can take an unused sprig and stick it in a pot of dirt to grow your own herb? Thank you old roomie, Jeff.) I guess that is a close as I can get to having a tree this year.

 

2 tablespoons lime juice  (about 1-2 limes, roll them on counter before cutting for easier juicing)
2 tablespoons honey
1 1/2 teaspoons vegetable oil
3 garlic cloves, crushed 
1/4 cup (or to taste) of fresh rosemary leaves
1 dash salt and pepper

Put all ingredients in a blender. Spoon over anything that needs some zip! See my examples of use below.

• Try it as a taco sauce. Worked great on a white fish.
• Make a bean (I tested chickpea) and roasted celery salad.
• Tossed with chickpeas, quinoa and steamed escarole (looks like lettuce but bitter when raw, pictured above)
• Works fine as a salad dressing too! Complemented the smoked salmon, dried cranberries, beans and toasted squash seeds (yes, sometimes I save my winter squash seeds for consuming)

 Have you ever tried fruit cake and is it as bad as it seems to be?

Weekend Appetizer: Trio of Zippy Summer Veggies for bread or lettuce cups

Although fall is beginning to creep in (though you could not tell with 103 degree weather) as evidenced by swim suits banished from store racks, temporary Halloween stores moving in, e-mails about Restaurant Week, and a sign at the farmer's market "we still have peaches", I am still delighting in the challenge of the seemingly never ending supply of peppers, cucumbers, squash and lettuce. That is the beauty of the CSA box-when you get the same things multiple weeks in a row it really gets your noggin going about different ways to try eating the vegetables. 

This week my challenge was lettuce-I do salads (today was tuna sashimi with bean sprouts, japanese seaweed salad and some mae ploy sauce to combat the warm weather), spring rolls, Vietnamese noodle salad (bun), Japanese somen noodle salad (using a rice noodle now of course), tacos and bedding for enchiladas. I even tried doing a baked lettuce dish once a few years ago (I pretty much took the whole thing home from the potluck I brought it to).  Even with this variety I get to the point where I do not want to order salad out at a restaurant.

So what to do with the dreaded iceberg-my least favorite as it tastes like nothing. My train of thought: What goes well with "nothing"?  Something really flavorful that needs a partner that lets it shine. Then the light bulb, ohhh-Eggplant tapenade that I made a couple years back! Buttery soft eggplant when cooked right, hob nobbing with Italian herbs and zesty tomato, could be lovingly plopped into lettuce cups. Or if you happen to have a fresh batch of bread (I really adore this bun recipe . You must use a scale, but has worked magically with whatever combo of gluten free flours I have in the pantry.)

Eggplant tapenade, roasted peppers and marinated mushrooms-made 3 light servings

This makes for a fine appetizer or light meal. Plan to make this on a weekend when you have lots of time or grab some helping hands for prepping and measuring ingredients.

 

 To start get your oven preheated to 400F OR You could probably try putting this on the grill if you want to avoid turning on the oven in the summer heat (not sure what the cooking times are like) but use foil on the eggplant to keep the sauce in and if you have one, a metal cooking basket on the peppers.

 Eggplant tapenade adapted from Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook

1.5 tsp salt*

2 tsp olive oil

1 cup finely chopped onion

1 tbsp minced garlic

½ tsp dried basil

½ tsp dried oregano

1 tbsp tomato paste

     

      1.       Peel and dice the eggplant. I chopped up the skin and saved it to add in later.

           2.   Remove bitter juices from eggplant. *See options below if sodium is of concern to your diet.

Option 1: sprinkle with ½ tsp of salt and place on paper towels (or tea towel for lint free-no-paper-wasting) to drain.  This will help remove the bitterness from eggplant.

Option 2 (low sodium)  I researched online and BDL at cheftalk.com says you could try using less bitter eggplant such as Japanese variety   or younger, smaller Italian eggplant  

 

Option 3 (low sodium) BDL also says  you can cook twice to remove the bitterness. For this recipe you can sauté the eggplant a few minutes and drain on a towel/tea towel and then add into the tomato sauce in the next step. 

     3.        Heat the oil over medium high heat in a medium saucepan (oven proof it you have it), adding the onion (and eggplant skin chopped up if you like), stir often and cook about 1 minute.  Add remaining salt, basil and oregano. Continue stirring and cook 1 minute more. Add in the tomato paste and eggplant. Cook until eggplant begins to soften about 3 minutes.

    4.       Transfer into a baking dish if your sauce pan isn’t oven proof. Place in the oven to bake uncovered about 30-35 minutes. Stirring once or twice during this time, checking to see if eggplant is completely softened.

Roasted Peppers from Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook

1 red and 1 yellow sweet pepper, cut into ¼” thick slices

½ tsp red wine vinegar

1-2 tsp olive oil

    1.        Mix the red wine vinegar and olive oil together. Drizzle over the peppers in a bowl and toss to coat evenly.

    2.       Spread out on foil atop a baking sheet. Keep in the oven about 25-30 minutes with the eggplant, until tender and some charring on the peppers occurs.

Marinated Mushrooms-from Vegetarian cookbook edited by Nicola Graimes.

8 ounces brown cremini or white button mushrooms, washed and quartered

2 tsp ketchup

2 tsp lemon juice

2 tbsp milk substitute (I used hemp milk)

While your eggplant and peppers are roasting in the oven.  Put mushrooms into a small saucepan with ketchup, lemon juice and milk. Simmer for 5 minutes until most of the liquid has evaporated and mushrooms are tender.

What are you going to be doing for Halloween? Have you ever been a food object?

Summer Sniffles-Remedies & Chipotle Vegetarian Chili

The dreaded summer cold has found me. Snuffling around, building sinus pressure and having my normal "Daria" voice drop to an even lower pitch makes me slow down and take care. Things that make me feel better:

1. Light exercise-Consider what kind of symptoms are present. With symptoms limited to the neck and above and without fever, I have the energy to still move about this time. Monday at the gym was wearing work out gloves, not coughing or sneezing so hopefully did not spread any germs (at the time I thought it could be allergies and wanted to motivate my friend to go this week).  I'll use sanitary spray now that symptoms have been lingering. Tuesday, I found some gentle yoga poses here that felt nice. Wednesday was resting. Thursday just breaking a sweat doing an easy jog in the cooler evening seemed to help my nasal congestion. No pressure to push it.

2. Wellness Formula-Shades swears by it. And so do I. He got it from a holistic minded practitioner. If you get take it early enough it can prevent. But otherwise, seems to reduce the severity. They have it on bodybuilding.com or if you need it right away, their website lists stores who carry it . In San Diego I have got it at Sprouts and Whole Foods before. A little pricey taking 3 tablets every 3 hours when sick but I think feeling 10x better is worth it. They are horse pills so get a big glass o' water!

3. Restful activities-an obvious treatment but I still know a lot of people who just plow on through pretending like their body isn't crying for rest. I like being propped up with pillows of all sizes on the couch for reading (a touch of practical, some for fun like Game of Thrones or Dead Beat about obituary readers and writers, some for inspiration like Food Truck cookbook/stories), cracking up over Project Runway, and going to bed early.

4. I know you want the edibles. My buddy Karin recommended a hot drink (ingredients pictured) to stave off a cold and/or its symptoms. I like to put it in my favorite pretty big mugs. Pretty things for when you're not feeling pretty inside.

5. Apparently heating foods like onion and garlic are good for when you are sick. I heard this taking a series of yoga weekend workshops this year. Supposed to be part of ayurvedic medicine. So the thought is to use less of them when you are healthy and use it to help your body fight. I would like to learn more about Ayurveda. I hear it often around yogis but embarrassingly don't know much except each person has a dominant element or type of energy..something like that. I bet the yoga studio I attend has a good book, but can anyone have experience or on the contrary does anyone poo-poo this?

6.  Spicy foods-I like making the Korean instant spicy soups (another recommendation from Karin back in the college days) to numb itchy or sore throats, but to be honest I cannot tell what is in the "kimchi powder"-it could be ingredients I am not supposed to have. So I made an adapted vegetarian version of Rachel Ray's turkey chipotle stoup (stew/soup) with bountiful summer peppers and canned chipotle. On my ALCAT results I am not supposed to have chili powder, chipotle or paprika...but I have not started yet. Getting used to dairy and soy. I think it's easier to let go/reduce of a few things at a time, while I finish off the perishable no-no items before starting the detox anyway.

Chipotle Vegetarian Chili

This recipe can turn into a weekend (aka time intensive) if you don't use short cuts. You may need to plan ahead. You could do chopping, the stock and beans on a leisurely day and make the rest on a busy though-it cooks together in under 20 minutes. It makes about 4 servings.

3 cups home-made or store bought veggie stock
1 cup dried kidney beans-soaked overnight, then cooked (~1 hour) or about 2 cups canned kidney beans rinsed
1/2 cup diced red onions
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tbsp chili powder
2 tsp olive oil
2 canned chipotles, chopped finely
2 cups chopped sweet peppers
1 cup chopped tomato
pinch of smoked (or regular) salt (to taste)-got mine at Little Italy's Saturday market. (my friend Jeff says it's easy to make, but my little test tube has lasted a couple years so I haven't got around to trying)

1. Heat a pot that can hold at least 5 cups of liquid on medium-high. Add the olive oil allowing to heat up for a couple minutes. Then add onion, garlic, chili powder and chipotles to cook about 5 minutes.

2. Add your stock, tomatoes and beans. Bring to boil and then  reduce heat. Simmer 10 minutes.

3. Slurp and sooth your throat with this fiery concoction.

What are your best activities or consumables for when you're under the weather?

What to do with tomatillos?

Caring for an unfamiliar produce

The small green tomato-looking orbs wrapped in papery brown husks came in my CSA box last week. A friend of a friend had made salsa for tortilla chips once, but that was all I knew of tomatillos.

My first question about new produce, "how do I store them?" I had no idea until I started buying food at farmer's market that some produce deserves better than just being thrown into the fridge drawers. Tomatoes should never go in the fridge (they get mushy) and some leafy herbs do best if you keep them in a cup of water in the fridge or wrapped loosely with a damp paper towel.  After seeing mixed reviews with trusty Googling the answer about tomatillos, I decided to just go with the leaving them loosely on the counter. They fared fine in San Diego humidity (80-ish degrees when no one is home) for about 2 weeks.

Next was "what am I supposed to do with these guys?" I found out they have a refreshing tangy flavor-in the two recipes I tested (not dairy free but may be adaptable once I do some experimenting), they get cooked in some way before consumption.


Tomatillo Recipe #1 (untested possible adaptation for non-dairy, naturally no soy!): I Googled "tomatillo mac n' cheese" as I have bleu cheese I am desperately trying to mow through so I can start my detox. Last time I ever ask Shades to pick me up a bag of cheese at Smart & Final (or as my sis fondly calls Fart n' Smile). I've been working on this cheese since spring time -it's been residing in the freezer and I think it has been breeding. Hoping I can experiment and try to vegan-ize the recipe with nutritional yeast and perhaps some toasted nuts in place of dairy-stay tuned in! Here is the original recipe at What's Cookin'

The substitutes I made were 1) 1 cup of bleu cheese and 1 cup Mexican blend cheese shredded and 2) used olive oil for half the butter. 3) I left off the tortilla chips and green chiles and instead put in probably half a cup of chopped hot assorted peppers, seeds in (depends on how hot you like it). 4) I used cornstarch in place of flour to make it gluten free. 5) Also because it's summer, I didn't want the oven on so I didn't do the baking step.  I had one serving with chicken and one vegetarian. Either way delicious! It yielded about 4 servings.

Tomatillo Recipe #2 (untested possible adaptation for non-dairy, naturally no soy)

Adaptation of Sunset Magazine's Tomatillo Salsa for Halibut
Thanks for the recipe, my Lisa!

Modifications made for tomatillo salsa: 1) still used butter but imagine for dairy free I could just use an equivalent amount of oil.  2) used mint instead of cilantro-worked well for cucumber pancakes but a little fun-kay with chicken taquitos. 3) fresh  lemon juice instead of lime  4) used greek yogurt for the sour cream (to make this dairy free eventually, I am hoping to try making a nut-based "sour cream" that I have seen on some blogs, but I need a food processor)

Served the tomatillo salsa with Cucumber pancakes (dairy-free, soy-free) from One Hot Stove's blog. They are so quick and easy-ready within the half hour! They remind me of zucchini pancakes that my mom only used to make for dinner whenever my dad was on a business trip ("breakfast is eaten for breakfast" must have been how daddy-o felt). She'd have me and my sister help grate up the squash and then we mixed it with Bisquick while she fried up some sausage links.

Since the recipe called for 2 large cucumbers, I just estimated 1.5 cups of grated cucumber would be sufficient and did half white rice flour and half brown rice flour. I got the white rice flour from Fresh & Easy and brown rice flour likely came from Sprouts, Whole Foods or Jimbo's (go SD for healthy store options).

See, I think I made my batter too thick as I had to use the ladle to spread it and it only yielded 3 pancakes instead of the 5-6 it was supposed to make.

 So next time, I will add more water and perhaps grate more cucumber so it doesn't get too thick to turn and fall apart like my second cake did. That's right, I cook just for myself so many times I don't have beautiful presentation...what is the opposite of food porn?

What  kinds of foods do you enjoy eating outside of their traditional meal times ?

Recipe on a weekday: Pickled rice, salmon and summer veggies

 I had a craving for pickles after eating at Burger Up in Nashville, TN for this summer's vacation and decided to make Refrigerator Pickles-cuz I'm scared of the bacteria and not ready to get the equipment for boiling- after getting lots of cucumbers in the box. I hate throwing things away, so time to come up with something to do with pickle juice.

For one serving:
3/4 cup cooked rice
1-2 tbsp leftover pickle juice
1/2 cup lemon-juice steamed summer squash, half circles
1/4 cup chopped sashimi grade salmon and/or broiled salmon skin (I broiled about 10 minutes until the skin was crispy)
1/2 cup halved cherry tomatoes

1. Start the rice if you don't have any made already. I use a rice cooker but you can make it on the stove too.

2. Bring 1/2" of water to boil in a small pot and squeeze half a lemon in.  While waiting for the boiling (it won't take long), cut your summer squash in half lengthwise and then into 1/4" slices so you have half circles.

3. Cut up or broil your salmon. 

4. Slice your cherry tomatoes in half.

5.  For each serving of rice, spoon the leftover pickle juice over the hot rice and mix in.

6. Top with the summer squash, salmon/skin, and tomato. If you plan to take it as a leftover, leave the salmon and cherry tomato separate so those don't get over-cooked in the microwave.