Noodles, soup, beans mushroom and chicken

Faux trifle

When I take a break from writing sometimes I want a snack that’s both nourishing and a treat. I want fast, satisfying and fresh, so I make a faux trifle.

I made muffins on Monday. Today being Friday, they are viable but getting dry. They were nothing special to start with – from a nice enough moist organic banana muffin mix, but you’d never confuse them with homemade. Without their moistness, they are nothing.

Today I ground one up into coarse crumbs in a small bowl. I added vanilla yogurt and almost dessert tofu then stirred it up to a bready-custardy mix.

I could have drizzled it with a fruit syrup or honey or chocolate milk syrup. Or topped it with fresh fruit or frozen berries. I’ve blended it before, making a kind of smoothie.

It’s totally customizable to the moment’s whim and pantry and is always delicious, and a pretty healthy snack.

Sure there’s sugar, but you just build that into your daily diet plan. I believe that if you feel indulgent when you snack, you will feel satisfied and not crave snacks as often. The sugars and carbs give you quick energy.

Tofu and yogurt are high in fat and protein. Protein gives us long-term energy, and along with fat, contributes to a mental and physical feeling of fullness that makes us want to stop eating.

We continue to eat until we feel satisfied; one way to eat less is to take in foods that satisfy us.

Spicy Italian Sausage

From Columbus Meat Market. Yum!

Perfect fall Sunday afternoon, and dinner

I had a lovely Sunday, enjoying fall weather and eating. I'd already bought a chicken on Saturday and today walked up to the local groceries for veg and wine. Got a nice red - although I was expecting to drink white, it was this red that caught my eye. So I got that and went in search of beets, sweet potatoes and onions.

I came home with pearl onions, a couple of sweet yellows, two beets, a white and an orange sweet potato, green beans, oyster mushrooms, and a parsnip.

I salted the chicken, rubbing coarse salt into the skin creating a bit of a crust on the breasts and legs. (Not too much or it gets salty). Sprinkled dried herbs such as herbes de province and ground cumin. I placed several garlic cloves in body cavity and put the whole thing in a pot in the fridge.

Washed and chopped the veg - beet, carrot, potato, sweet potato, turnip, green beans, pearl onions, sweet onion, and mushroom - placing it in a roasting pan with a bit of salt. Let it sit on the counter, loosely covered with saran wrap, while I went outside and raked leaves.

I raked the front yard and then came in. After opening the wine to let it breathe, I pre-heated the oven to 425f, then started a fire in the living room fireplace.

As the fire built, I drained the bit of water from the vegetables, added two tablespoons of red rice, about half a cup of chicken stock and then drizzled them with olive oil and salt. I threw about a dozen hazelnuts on the chicken. Placed the chicken on top of the veg, then covered it loosely in tinfoil and popped it in the oven.

Pour a glass of wine, plop down in front of the roaring fire, with the Sunday Times. Ahh.

After 25 minutes, I removed the foil, and let it cook for another 25 minutes. Finally, I dropped the temp to 395f for the final 25 minutes.

Wow - it was so juicy! And flavorful. The beets were sweet, the carrot and potato were soft without being mushy. The beans were still a little crunchy. The rice was still hard inside but had a cooked quality to it, and because there was so little it was like a ground nut garnish. Very pleasant.

Longaniza Soup

I fried up some longaniza, sliced and added them to broth, along with onion and carrot. Simmered it down for about twenty-five minutes and ta da- excellent tasty lunch. Pretty healthy and good for cooler weather.

Longaniza is a sweet filipino sausage. It usually comes frozen. It's a perfect addition to everything except maybe coffee. Kids like it because of the sweetness and small link size. Some sausages - especially pork - can taste funky to me, but I never experience that with longaniza. Another good freezer staple.

Double Happiness soup

Did you know that you can find happiness in food? Double happiness even. A local noodle company sells Double Happiness noodles. What other food can make you feel so optimistic?

Soup for dinner tonight: I took a bag of three sausages out of the freezer. I buy them in bulk, split up the package and toss them in the freezer in ziplock bags.

Thaw them in a fry pan, about half-covered in water. Boil them off – remember to pierce the skins several times.

Meanwhile I boiled three litres of water for the noodles and let them boil unlidded for about twenty minutes. (That’s how long these ones take.)

I put a portion of frozen chicken stock into a pot to thaw and heat. I crush and add one garlic clove and some salt.

With all the pots underway, I wash and chop half an onion, several button mushrooms, a dozen green beans, and the rest of a very sweet red pepper. (Save the seeds for spring planting.)

The sausages are just about done now. The water’s boiled off and a meat thermometer inserted tells me they are to temperature. I let them brown, turning them as they sizzle. Add a small ladle of stock to deglaze the pan, then throw in the  chopped onion, mushrooms and green beans.

I hold the pepper back because it won’t take long to sweat the flavour and I don’t want mushy pepper. When the vegetables are almost sweated, I add the pepper for a few minutes, then toss everything into the stock pot to heat on med-low for five or ten minutes.

When the noodles are done, I drain and rinse (to stop the cooking – don’t want them mushy) then portion some into each soup bowl.

Add the soup over top and voila – a beautiful, nutritious and delicious pre-workout dinner.

Happiness

One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.

Iris Murdoch

Pizza night

Friday night is pizza night at our house. Last night's was chicken, artichoke hearts, olives, onions, mushrooms, and bocconcini, with mozzarella over top.

I don't use pizza sauce or tomato paste, opting instead for one of my more recently acquired staples; bottled organic tomatoes, crushed and strained. They are cheap like borscht, last a while in the pantry and delicious. I often make soup with just them, stock and a little bit of seasoning. On pizza, I just pour some of the tomatoes and add salt & pepper, and maybe some fresh or dried basil. Easy.

My daughter stopped using bocconcini on her pizzas, complaining that the little pearls didn't melt. I was surprised, thinking they were just little mozza balls, but boy was she right. They didn't melt or add much flavour. Clearly they are not interchangeable with mozzarella, which melts easily and deliciously. Love them in a salad - wouldn't use them on pizza again.

The crust was great. As usual I used Bittman's basic pizza crust recipe, but for the first time I used the crunchier variation - substituting cornmeal for some of the flour. Delicious. And it rose better. I've stolen a friend's idea of putting the dough in the oven during its rise (raise?) and leaving the oven light to generate a touch of heat. Because my oven is so well insulated, that lightbulb makes a difference and the dough seemed happy. It was big warm and fluffy when we got back from taekwondo. It cooked up really well. Our oven only goes as high as 500f, but I got fully-cooked, crunchy thin crust. Yum.

The original fruit by the metre*

*small canadian joke

Have you seen that very scary bright red shiny plastic-looking stuff that's supposed to be good for you called fruit by the foot or fruit roll-ups? To which are added sugars, flavours and dyes but is marketed as if it were capital-H healthy? Woo, so it's high in vitamin C - I ask you what's not high in vitamin C these days? If you live and eat in north america, you'd have to work pretty hard to get less than your rda of vitamin C. If vitamin C is a food's biggest claim, then perhaps it's not worth the money. And to repeat myself, I try to buy food not made by machines.

When I was a girl, my mum baked a lot and one of our treats was when she peeled apples. We'd gather round begging for peels and hoping for the longest unbroken string, enjoying succulent flavours and the often-crunchy freshness. We'd marvel at mum's dexterity with the peeler; something almost impossible for our small and untrained hands.

As I got older and learned to work a peeler, I took pride in each apple peeled in a single string. Now my kids watch in amazement and fight over the peels.

Fresh apple peels have it all - nutritious, delicious, ephemeral, seasonal. They are beautiful and varied, fun to play with and easy to eat, and best of all you can eat the wrapping.

Apple crumble for breakfast

after dinner we have it with whipped cream

I believe that each day is a gift and should be celebrated as such. So today, a school holiday for the kids, we had popovers and apple crumble for breakfast. But wait a minute, you say, apple crumble is a dessert and as such neither healthy nor a desirable way to start the day.

Before you allow this kneejerk response to carry the day, let's compare. Bacon and eggs is not a bad breakfast, but what's in your bacon? Apart from all the salt and smoke (even natural smoke isn't good for you), there's a lot of protein.

Cereal? Don't get me started. There's either tons of sugar, or kids add it. And not much protein or flavour. In most cereals, almost all of the calories are from fat or carbohydrates. All those carbs get you going but you crash an hour later. The milk saves the day, nutritionally speaking.

Pancakes aren't much better, and if you're picking up breakfast from a drive-thru window you're just kidding yourself. (Nutritionally as well as the dis-healthiness of eating on the run, oblivious to your food and body.)

I recently read an article by a fitness consultant who said she eats dessert only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and has cut all other sugar out of her diet.

Blek. How over-regulated and well, dull. Life is a celebration - eat dessert every day. And as the old saying goes, life is uncertain - eat your dessert first. I reward myself for all the hard work I do and energy I expend in service by eating well and loving what I eat.

So popovers with apple crumble: using Bittman's recipes from How to Cook Everything they contain eggs, milk, flour, oats, brown sugar, six cups of apples, six tablespoons of butter, a teaspoon or less of white sugar, salt and cinnamon. Not bad.

Not made by machines or kept warm under heat lamps. Not dried out and tasteless but warming and desirable. Textures were great: the apples were softened with a bit of not-quite-crunch in the middle, oat topping was crunchy, the popovers their usual combination of doughy and crispy. (One of my big complaints about machine-made food is textural blandness.)

Each kid ate about the equivalent of one egg and one apple, and I'm sure less flour than a piece of toast. They loved it and felt very special to have such a 'decadent' breakfast. Lovely. Now isn't that what life's all about?

Fish & Chips

Made fish and chips for supper tonight. Not those nasty freezerburnt fishsticks, but real fish, breaded and baked. I made the chips from sweet potatoes.

The whole meal takes about ten minutes to prepare - cutting the sweet potatoes takes about five and the fish dredging another five, but that's done while the chips are cooking. It doesn't take much more effort or time than shoving frozen sticks in the oven, and yet tastes much better and I'm sure is way more nutritious. It's definitely closer to living food.

I sliced the sweet potatoes into shoestring-sized fries, drizzled them with olive oil and shook salt over them. Put them on a greased cookie sheet, and into a 450f oven. They cook up pretty quickly - about 25 minutes.

The fish were sole filets. I bought a large bag of them from costco and keep them in the freezer. Because the filets are individually wrapped, they stay separated and thus easy to take out as needed. They thaw quickly - about ten minutes or so.

I dredged the thawed filets in two beaten eggs, with salt and pepper and some herbes de provence. Then I breaded them in Panko flakes - Japanese style breadcrumbs. Placed all the filets on a cookie sheet and baked them in the same oven (450f) for about fifteen minutes.

Served with a choice of ketchup or sweet chili sauce (my current favorite ketchup substitute). Such a great dinner! And definitely way less expensive than storebought frozen fries and fishsticks.

Sausage soup with chanterelle mushrooms and peas

As you by now have guessed, one of my favorite things is soup for lunch. I find it can be incredibly nutritious, full of energy for the day ahead, digestible enough to avoid gas and discomfort, and light enough so that I don't get the 2pm sleepies.

One of my favorite food tricks is buying meat in bulk at costco then portioning and freezing it for future or last-minute use. I get their excellent mild italian or honey & garlic sausages, then freeze them, three to a bag. Even if I haven't had the time or foresight to thaw them, I can pull them out of the freezer, boil them down in an inch or so of water and let them brown slightly. Add rice or noodles, a quick veg like frozen peas or rough-cut carrots cooked in chicken stock and brown sugar, or a salad, and bob's your uncle - quick and nutritious meal.

Last night's quick meal became today's soup. I added chicken stock to the leftover sausages, as well as the chanterelles I'd sauteed in butter. Heated everything, then turned off the burner. To the bowl of soup I added in some frozen peas and let it sit for five minutes while they thawed.

Hey presto a quick and delicious soup full of protein and energy.

Popovers for breakfast

We had a lovely morning, lounging in our jammies, watching tv or drinking coffee, depending on age and proclivity. I made popovers - my favorite weekend breakfast. They are pretty healthy but feel slightly decadent. Delicious with coffee or hot chocolate, and we pair them with fruit or fruit butter, depending on what's around.

I use Bittman's recipe from his How to Cook Everything book. I love his recipes because they stand up to meddling - in fact he recommends and suggests variations. To me the mark of a good recipe is its ability to be messed with. I often add savoury things like cheese or bacon. Today I added some herbes de province - wow, what a difference yet somehow still subtle.

I've been experimenting with the fat I use - the recipe calls for oil or butter. Previously I used butter in the recipe and to grease the pan, but because you place the pan in the oven to pre-heat them, the butter would burn and get nasty.

So I switched to olive oil as grease and butter in the recipe. Around the same time, I moved from a gas-oven kitchen to electric. In the new house, my popovers weren't rising - they were dense little hockey pucks, and I wasn't sure of the cause. Was it the new stove, olive oil, or possibly old flour?

I also have grapeseed oil and have been using it where I want lighter oil and less taste, or oil that can stand a higher heat without burning. (I use it as my facial moisturizer - yes really. It's better than any official beauty product I've ever tried -  and I've tried most.)

I substituted the grapeseed oil in both the recipe and as pan grease. Ta da. Beautifully-rising popovers that are hollow in the center of their bottoms. My youngest felt a little ripped-off that hers was empty, as she put it.

The lightness of a popped popover makes it easier for morning digestion, and definitely looks prettier.

Best Lunch Ever

I think I'm proving to myself how much I love homemade tomato soup and a cheese sandwich for lunch. It's funny because I remember having that for lunch after kindergarten; sitting with my mum, crumbling saltines into my soup as I told her about my morning at school. Nice memory.

I love tomato soup when it's smooth and homemade. It's one of those soups you can't fake - out of a can never tastes the same.

This version took many cherry tomatoes, two romas, a beefsteak tomato, strained tomatoes, chicken stock, salt & pepper, and a tablespoon or so of tapioca starch to thicken it. I cooked it all down for until the fresh tomatoes were mushy, then strained the soup and served it beside a grilled ham and cheddar sandwich. Yum.