Recipes

Main Dish:

Baked Pasta

Burritto

Falafel and Roti

Lasagna Rolls

Meatball Subs (that doesn't involve meat)

Sloppy Joes

Sides:

Biscuits

Breadsticks

Potatoes Rojo

Millet salad Mexicano

Sweet potato pancakes

Lebanese garbanzo beans

Soups:

Vegetable Chowder

Dips:

French Onion dip

Extra:

Energy bars

Thanksgiving 2013

I was really ready to not care at all about thanksgiving this year, and in the end I only really made stuff we normally would eat. The recipe I wanted to share from this, though, is my mac and cheese recipe. I have experimented with mac and cheese for years. I think its like one of those recipes like chili or tomato sauce that you have to try a lot of recipes and experiment with them in order to find what your preference is. My trouble with mac and cheese up until now is that most of the recipes use a bachamel sauce, and I can't help it but bachamel sauce tastes like gravy to me. gravy with cheese added. cause it is gravy with cheese added. lets be honest. So I have been working around that this whole time. Meanwhile some time ago I found this recipe that was roasted potatoes with cheese on top. So I would fry up some fake ground sausage with garlic and fennel seeds added and I would add it to the potatoes and roast it with cheese and serve it with steamed kale. Then I thought: wouldn't this be great in a soft taco shell as a taco? Well it was. but I had to go one step further. The step further was based off of my pasta sauce. I was making a red marinara sauce and an alfredo sauce and adding them together, because red sauce alone is kind of hard on me cause of my acid reflux. I simplified the alfredo sauce by just heating up heavy cream, adding a little vegetable bullion cube, and parm cheese. So I decided to try this with sharp white cheddar cheese. It was delicious and tasted so so good on the potato/sausage tacos. Recipe about 1/2 cup of heavy cream Sharp white cheddar cheese, maybe about half a block, added in after the cream gets hot. DON'T BOIL CREAM add about 1/4 piece of vegetable bullion cube pepper. Mix until cheese melts. Experiment with cheese and cream amounts. I just decide how much to put in of each when I make it. So back to the original point, I thought: Wouldn't this work for my mac and cheese too? So I doubled what you see up there, boiled some macaroni noodles, cut up some shiitaki mushrooms and broccoli, mixed it together and baked it on 350 for about 1/2 an hour. clyde lovvvves it. the shiitakes are really important, they give it really good flavor. make sure you don't add too many noodles for how much cheese sauce you make. I make the whole box, and add them in slowly to figure out a good ratio. This was the highlight of thanksgiving this year.

3 roasted root pasta (aka salty pasta)

it gets salty. I'm just saying.
first i roasted some root vegetables.
I used
1 beet
1 parsnip
1 carrot
cut into about 1 inch chunks. i put them in bowl and coated them with about 1 tablespoon of oil, pinch of salt, pepper, and garlic powder. After they were coated i put them on a baking sheet into a 425 degree oven.
after 8 minutes i turned everything over
after 8 more minutes I take the parsnip and carrot off the baking sheet and then I put the beet back in a baked until it was done. I think it took maybe 10 or 15 more minutes.
MEANWHILE
I cooked up about 5 strips of fake bacon until it was nothing but crisp. (stiff)
I did this by putting oil in my cast iron and putting bacon in until it was no longer soft. it couldn't move without cracking.
MEANWHILE
I sauted 1/2 on onion.
I cut up about 6 kalamata olives, about a jars worth of artichoke hearts, and about 8 sundried tomatoes (i just get a combo thing of them at the Mediterranean bar at kroger). I also cut up about 1 leaf of collards so I could have some leafy green. After the onions were cooked I added all this into the onion pan with about 1/4 cup grated parm. cheese. I added the roots.
I cooked brown rice spiral noodles.

Resist, then give in

I had to resist all caffe ine for a little while since my acid reflux became constant and uncontrollable, and since my sugar is mostly in my beverages, I also had less sugar. Then, when I got my medication I gave in. Thats been going on since. So now its back to the resist side. I am going for a one sugar and caffeine drink a day (total is one drink). I just read this thing about controlling your blood sugar for keeping alert. Which I and everyone knows, but I still have to give in and my sugar intake has really increased a lot so I have been pretty anxious which causes compulsive talking, and thats never good. Resisting is fun, too.

I have been really successful this week thinking about how to divide my recipes into categories. First, I think of the base, which is the pasta, or rice, or tortilla. etc.

Then the protein

Then the vegetables

Then the spices
Then the sauce.

The cooking method (baked, loose, fried, grilled, boiled)

The recipe practically writes itself. I was successful in this with a pasta dish I made the other night. Here is what I did:

cook 1 box of whole wheat penne until its still kind of hard, cause we are baking this in sauce

I made a sauce out of about 1/2 cup of heavy cream, 1 cup of rice milk, and almost all of a wedge of fontina cheese. maybe over a cup. I made this in a large pot, because I am adding everything to it. I cooked an onion in this pan before I added the milk and cheese, and also added about 2 tablespoons of butter. Then I added the vegetables. I added mushrooms that were quartered, some spicy greens that were called kale but I have my doubts, and broccoli. For my protein I added some tofurky cut into cubes and some green peas. for the spices I did spicy-ish since its a white sauce. black pepper, paprkia, and red pepper flakes. I put all of this in my thickened sauce and added the noodles. Then I put it in a 350 degree oven until it was cooked. about 20 minutes. it was pretty good.

good biscuits with a buttermilk substitution

This biscuit recipe is way better than my older one.

It comes from the Better Homes and Gardens 14th edition cookbook, which is awesome, by the way.

What was the most useful about this cookbook is it explained how to substitute buttermilk and get the same results. apparently buttermilk is acidic, and in recipes with buttermilk there is also baking soda, and when those acid and baking soda collide there is that volcano action from our science project youth. so to subsitute you want to put one tablespoon of acidic liquid like lemon juice or vinegar into a glass measuring cup or a one cup measuring cup. then add enough milk to make one cup total. (not a cup and tablespoon, but a cup of combined liquid total). Rice milk works fine, thats what I use. let sit for 5 minutes.

3 cups all purpose flour (but I do half and half all purpose and half whole wheat successfully)

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar (just give up substitution and buy it)

3/4 cup cold butter (I found out you want it cold, cause I used to melt it and add it, so that when the butter melts in the dough while cooking it releases steam causing the flaky layers)

1 and 1/4 cups sour milk

this is a wet dough by the way

Preheat oven to 450 deg.

combine dry ingredients. (1-5)

cut up butter and add into dough. you can use a pastry blender, or two knives I have heard you can use, I rub it in with my fingers until its all flour/butter granuals.

make a well in center and add milk

stir until moistened. its pretty wet.

flour your board and kneed it a few times and pat it out until its about 3/4 inch thick (I guess) and cut out biscuits with a cutter or in my case a cup rim. cook for 10-14 minutes.

This recipe should cook about 12 biscuits. I always cut it in half.

some things I have found out or heard:

don't kneed them too much or they get ruined. I don't know the consequences, and I also don't know how much is too much. I've heard that from multiple sources.

secondly don't oil your baking sheet. I have done this. my bottoms cooked way faster, I think.

The recipe says not to do this, but I was scared of them sticking so I did it anyway. you don't need to.

Lebanese garbanzos

this calls for fava beans, but every time I buy them and cook them they smell a little funny and never get fully soft, so I just use chick peas and everything works out fine. So use what you want.

2 cups beans (I just use a can of chickpeas) can also be fava or broad beans

2 garlic cloves crushed and finely chopped

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup oil

1/2 cup cut up parsley

green onion

in bowl combine everything after beans are cooked. I like my beans to still be hot, though.

energy bars

we can't eat the store granola bars cause of the nuts, but this works

1 cup rolled oats (I don't use instant, but the recipe says you can)

1/2 cup pumpkin seeds (use what you want)

1/2 cup wheat germ

1/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup dried fruit + 1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup dry milk

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (but who are we kidding, I love cinnamon, I probably use like a tablespoon)

1/3 cup maple syrup (unless I have it for a special occasion, I use honey here. It works not as well in taste, but fine in consistency after which I have heated to make runny).

2 eggs

preheat oven to 350 deg.

coan 9X13 pan

put everything but syrup and eggs in blender (of course I use the magic bullet, and do this in batches)

after you get it out of blender then add syrup and eggs.

put into pan and coat bottom evenly.

cook until brown. it says 20 minutes, but mine cooked way faster than that, so check it after 10.

cool for 15 minutes.