chowder

tonight was chowder. I haven't been making anything but repeats this last week. It was like a best of.
Veg. chowder

Ingredients:
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
bulk of veggies- I like carrots, potatoes, squash, corn, white beans, broccoli, cauliflower
2 cloves of garlic
1 and 1/2 cup milk
1 and 1/2 cup water or broth
1 teaspoon basil
1/4 teaspoon dill
1/4 teaspoon thyme
salt and pepper

Melt butter in sauce pan
Stir in flour
stir in garlic-30 seconds
Add veggies (not beans yet), milk, and water/broth
add spices
simmer until potatoes are done
add beans before its almost done

Potatoes Rojo

mmmmm
This is really one of our favorites. Tonight I discovered a trick too.

Potatoes Rojo
Ingrediants:

A mixture of 2 pounds of potatoes and carrots ( I use sweet and regular, but I use the purple sweet kind that is grown here, I don't know about yam kind) cut into 8ths (meaning I cut the potatoes in half. The halves in half. and then those halves in half.
cut carrots in to half too lenghtways and midways.
The veggies should be the same size

For sauce:
6 tablespoons of butter
3 tablespoons of oil
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup of basil leaves
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 and 1/2 teaspoon paprika
dash cayenne
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Melt butter and oil. Add spices. Cook briefly. Pour over potatoes in a casserole dish.

Cook on 375 until done (takes about 40 minutes, sometimes less, depending on size of potatoes) open every 15 minutes to baste potatoes in sauce.

fake meatball subs

Tonight I made fake meatball subs. Here is the link for fake meatballs and the tomato sauce.
The fun part of this is calling the boys in and we all take our sub bread (I tried french bread a few times but its more bread then balls, sub bread does the trick) that I had toasted some and we all assemble our sandwiches. I cut up green onions, mushrooms, and red peppers to put on them. I had some zucchini in the sauce too, since the lady at the farmers market gave me an extra one today. SO on mine I put on mayo and mustard (sounds gross but it makes the sandwich really really good), then the fake balls, then the tomato sauce, then pickles, mushrooms, and g.onions, and then mozzerella cheese, and a little parm sprinkled on top of that. they all went back in the oven until the cheesey cheese was melted. yummy.
Yesterday I had my job interview, and I was a wreck all day. We had to drive across the island so I put together my favorite travel lunch: hummus,
goat cheese, toasted bread I made (the 6 grain), apple slices, and usually I have carrots but I was out. yummy. But I couldn't have dinner, the days stress collapsed my insides.
The day before was meganachos. We used to get this at taco stand, and I try to make it but its never as good. Here is my tofu recipe for it:

Extra firm tofu, shake out water. Cut pieces fairly thin, about 1/2 inch from the end. In my cast iron skillet I heat up olive oil. The tofu really does benefit from some marination in soy sauce, but I procrastinate. So when the oil is hot put in the tofu. The first round of seasonings are:
soy sauce, enough to cover the top of each piece. Its easy to over soy, but I think that playing around with it is necessary because every one likes soy different. Then I coat the top with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. When I say coat I mean I just shake it over until I see some on all the pieces.
When I flip them (when they start getting brown) I move the pieces around so they will cook evenly and add: cumin across each piece, fennel seeds (this is the secret ingredient that makes them taste like sausage, I use about 1/2 tablespoon), and cinnamon across each piece
When I flip again I put on each piece basil, thyme, and coriander.
When they start getting pretty cooked I cut them into smaller pieces and turn down the heat from med. to a little lower.

mega nachos:
1 can refried beans
I spread this across the bottom of the pan and bake on 350 degrees while the tofu cooks.
Next I cut up veggies to go on it. The ones I suggest are black olives, I like zucchini, carrots, mushrooms, red peppers, and green onions. When the beans are hot and the tofu is done I combine the veggies (raw), tofu, and beans in a casserole dish and top it with moz. cheese. yummmy.

chili

Tonight I wanted to make a mexican style soup with no recipe.
guess what mexican style soup is? Chili.
when you put in the beans, corn, tomatoes, and vegetables, and orzo pasta that pretty much makes chili.
so I tossed in some chili powder, cumin, basil, and oregano. It wasn't good or bad, just chili.
I cut up some green onions to go on top with my cheese and sour cream. and I made biscuits.
things to do with chili?
Chili cheese nachos. Have had these and its a good idea.
chili on fake hotdogs. well, I only eat fake hotdogs when clyde and self have fire. that would be hard to bring chili out there. unless it was a real campfire and then maybe I could cook chili on the side in one of those cast iron dishes you can cook on open fire.
OH chili cheese macaroni. OK tried that once and it wasn't that bad
chili cheese fries...
burrito with greens added, thats pretty good when I don't want stew two days in a row, somehow the tortilla transforms the chili

I'm sick

It is true, I got a head cold in the summer in hawaii. I don't know how, but it sucks. or blows (literally).My nose is running like crazy. but whatever, I still gotta eat. Soup? No, I didn't think about it until just now. For breakfast I tried to get some of everything, so I had the usual egg with clyde bread, grapes and bananas and rice milk. Lunch I had leftover from last night. recap on the weekend:
saturday, sick started, clyde talked me into walking to borders for activity, we ate at maui taco in the mall. we got our usual black bean and rice burrito covered in enchalata sauce. yum.
Sunday, sick, and the grocery store was out of food. crazy. not completely out, but out of most of the things on my ingredient list for what I was going to cook (but I will not talk about that until I get to cook it, I am so excited about it). So I made a weekday back up item on this weeks menu: Caribbean beans and rice. I made it about a year ago and both rubbo and clyde liked it. I think I used instant rice last time, and this time I found basmati rice in the freezer and decided to use it. last time it was like curry, cause you cook the beans and rice together in a mix of coconut milk and veggie broth, and the spices are all spice and thyme. This time it absorbed all the liquid and all i had left was beans and rice. I put some curry spices in it, because I just got some more cardamom from the store, but it overpowered it.
digression
today: super sick and busy. very busy. two tests and a literature review are due this week, and I have to serve on a committee for student conduct this week I just found out. So no time to make dinner really. The house has been warned. Tonight I put potatoes in the oven right before class, and when I came home PRESTO they were done. I love potatoes. clyde and I met sharon at jamba juice/starbucks for studying, so I had this beverage called the coldbuster with a shot of immunity. I hope tomorrow I can function again, and make my surprise dinner.

fake meatball night

ahh fake meatballs. always satisfying. I had all of that left over tofu from ravioli the other night, which used a surprisingly small amount of tofu. So I had all of this tofu mashed up with what was once frozen spinach and mushrooms. I weighed it, and it was a pound. This is good, cause thats how much I needed for my fake meatball recipe. Everyone said it was better than normal because the tofu had been sitting in flavor this week from the spinach, mushrooms, and then the salt, pepper, garlic sauce, and small amount of tomato sauce. This is how it went down:

1 pound tofu mixed with spinach and mushrooms *but usually I just do tofu
1/2 cup wheat germ
about 1/8 cup dried parsley
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon redpepper flakes
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
Mix that all together with your hands.
Usually I have to really press the tofu for some times before I make this for it to taste good, cause if there is a little water you will taste it. I don't know why. Maybe you wont, but I do. So press first.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
put 2 tablespoons of oil on a baking sheet
roll these guys into balls, the suggested ball is 1 and 1/2 inch. I keep them small, but not too small. about 3 fit on my subroll. Then I stick them into the oven and flip them every ten minutes. They cook a total of 30 minutes.
This is what I do with them:
I put them into subs. with tomato sauce. Tonight I forgot we ate the left over sauce for lunch and had to make some real quick. I did this:
pureed the can of chopped tomatos.
added 2 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
shook in basil and parsley and pepper
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
This tasted like too sweet crap. I called clyde in. He suggested it needed to cook off. So I shut the lid and let it cook for 10 minutes. It tasted fine.
I cut up my sub buns (I used to make french bread for this but there was too much bread involved, go subroll unless you want mostly bread) put my sauce and balls and cheese on there and baked until crusty.
Usually I will put cut up vegetables on it, but were out of everything but carrots and cabbage. This was a generally good food day. I started clyde and I on multi-vitamins today. Since we have been writing down everything we eat AND I got that book that tells me the nutritional content of everything we eat I see we are not getting enough B12. protein yes. Zinc yes. B6 yes. B12 no. So I had no choice. We'll see how it goes.