How to Cook Beans and Make them Yummie

I make beans frequently.  Why?

1. they are cheap!
2. they fill you up like meat. 
3. they stretch dishes with meat in them. (chili, sloppy joes, soups, etc.)
4. they have protein.
5. they are not wheat.
6. they are not dairy. 

I recently discoverd that putting beans in the pressure cooker is so awesome.  The beans cook really quickly.  You don't have to soak them. They are always perfect. 

I learned reccently also that it is okay to cook beans with salt!  When I first started cooking them, I read that salt makes beans tough when you cook them and should always add it after they are cooked. But I always felt my beans were flat and lacked 'zing.' Even when I cooked them with onion and garlic! Now, I cook them with salt.  And usually in the pressure cooker. 

Here's how:

for every one cup of beans, add 1 tsp salt and four cups water to your pan or pressure cooker. 

look up how long to cook your beans in a pressure cooker.  Or about how long they take on the stove. 

Cook them for that long. 

Use them in whatever you like. 

See?  Easy. Now you can make beans frequently too! 

Simple soup

I love making soup for dinner in the fall. This one came together really quickly because I had frozen chicken broth and frozen cooked beans.

I really like the way tomatoes and kale pair together in a soup, and so does Sam. Just the other day he was actually asking for kale and tomato soup. We are enjoying the last of summer's bounty of tomatoes, and we have a forest of kale in the garden.

In this soup: chicken broth, two big tomatoes, eight or so stems of lactinato kale, 1/2 a zucchini, three potatoes, about 3 cups pinto beans. So far I have only seasoned with salt. I will add some garlic and onions and I'm not sure for herbs. I froze basil and parsley from my garden this year in oil and I am really happy with how it turned out!

I better go finish dinner! I still want to whip up a batch of GF biscuits. Have a favorite recipe to share?

Spaghetti sqash weirdness

Today when I was cutting up a spaghetti sqash for dinner, I found two seeds that had sprouted inside the squash! How cool and strange is that!?!? Have you ever seen a sprouted seed inside a squash?

Dinner on the fire!

Tonight's dinner is cooking on the fire! I love that it doesn't heat my house up and I get to be outside.  What's more, usually when we cook on the fire, Chris does it, and all I have to do is prep. :-)

What's for dinner tonight? Chicken legs, baked potatoes and baked sweet potatoes and a salad.

Other exciting news: we got some plants for our garden today!

Taco Soup!

This evening I consider dinner to be a huge win. And we haven't even eaten yet! We are in serious need of a grocery run because last week was really crazy and I was away for a few days. This past weekend I just did not feel like going to the store. So, I didn't. As a result dinner time at the Good household has been sketchy at best this week.

As I looked through the sparse landscape that was our cabinets and fridge, an idea started taking shape. We would have to have soup, as that is the ultimate food stretching tool. We had some leftover ground beef. And some potatoes. Oh, and I'll stick the rest of the half eaten salsa in there.... that's when I knew-

Taco soup.

A few veggies rounded this soup quite nicely.

TACO SOUP

1 quart chicken broth
1/2 lb ground beef or shredded chicken
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, cut up
Celery, if you have it
1 cup peas
1 cup corn
1/2 TBS taco seasoning
2-3 potatoes, diced
1 jar salsa
Salt and pepper to taste
Shredded cheese for on top

Put everything except the cheese in a pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer and cook until potatoes are done, about 30 minutes. Serve with shredded cheese and cornbread.

This soup was a huge hit. All of it was gone and there was even fighting for seconds. I will definitely be making this again, and in a much bigger quantity. :-)

Happy New Year!

Well, it is so late in the new year to be finally posting that!

Why have I been away all this time?  Well, I was busy busy busy sewing up some cool Christmas presents.  :-) Which I will share with you another day, because I don't have the pictures right now!

Remember the last post I made (long ago...) about my new favorite blog?  Well the very next day I found my really new favorite blog.  It's called Cooking Traditional Food.  And I'm in love with it.  Kerry has put together some amazing recipes using ingredients that I use, and has even inspired me to start sprouting wheat again and even start trying to sprout beans!  (no success on that front yet...)

Okay, well the best part of it all is that Kerry offers a menu mailer-- a weekly or monthly mailer with a menu, the recipes, a shopping list for all the ingredients you need that week, and a daily guide for notes to write about what you need to do each day. I was really excited about this, because I was struggling so much for the last few months with figuring out what to eat each day, scrambling to make it, just buying whatever at the store and then making meals out of it later,...

I joined her email list just so I could get two free ones (a 'budget" one that's only three dinners per week and centers on less meat, and a "classic" one that provides five dinners per week and meat as the main course more often).  I used those two mailers to generate a meal plan for the last week and a half before Christmas. That week and a half was so nice!  I knew each day what I was going to cook and I could start it early enough to have dinner at a somewhat reasonable time.  :-) Hooray.

Guess what?!!??

Chris gave me a year subscription to the budget menu mailer for Christmas.  I was/am SO happy!  I have only been using it for a week now, but this week has been so stress free (on the food front-- NOT so much on the children puking front).  I printed out the mailer (the budget one comes once a month) and I put it in a binder to keep in the kitchen/dining room so that I can reference what's for dinner and the recipes easily.  I have been reviewing it each night before I go to bed so I am prepared for what's ahead the next day!  It's been great.  THANKS CHRIS YOU ARE THE BEST!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

I will be posting more soon.  I have to tell you how my couch recovering project went, tell you about my Christmas sewing project, some coconut flour pancakes I came up with for John, the pickles fermenting on my counter, and a whole bunch of other stuff I took pics of long ago and never told you about.

Love, Janet.

One Pan Dinners

I have been trying to simplify my life.  (I kind of laugh as I write this, because I feel like there is no possible way to simplify my life enough, and also because as soon as I simplify one area, I usually end up complicating another area!)

One area of my life that has been complicated, time consuming and sometimes stressful is dinner. Chris takes leftovers to work for lunch most days, so I cook something different every night. I also like to have a store of leftovers to offer for lunch and possibly dinner on the weekends.  This store lightens my load a bit on the weekends and frees up some family time.  :-)

That being said, I have been trying to simplify my dinner routine, at least a few nights a week, by prepping something that is all in one pan or pot (or crock pot).  I can throw it all into the pan and walk away, letting it cook.

Tonight, I seared two chicken breasts, added two cups of rice, two cups of milk, two cups of water (I would have used chicken broth if I had any), five cut up carrots and a bag of frozen corn (we did eight dozen this year!). I salted it, peppered it, garlic powdered it, and walked away.  (Well, I turned on the stove first!)  The prep time to do all this (including cutting the chicken breasts off the whole chicken) took about fifteen minutes. Dinner will take about an hour to cook.  While I would normally spend about an hour and fifteen minutes in the kitchen, now I am only spending 15.  I can use the extra hour before dinner to clean up, finish up school for the day, play a game with my kids, fold laundry, empty the dishwasher, bathe the kids, type a blog post,... the possibilities are endless! (I don't think I could get ALL that done in one hour, but a few of those items will be attainable!)  :-P

Some other recipes I can think of that are one pan:
Vegetable Soup, or any soup really
Chili
Beans and Rice
Lasagna
Hog Maw Cabbage Rolls

Can you think of any good dishes like these? I am always looking for new ones!

Boiling Diapers and Missing You!

Dear Bloggy-blogosphere,

I have been missing you!  But alas, I have had NO TIME to post.  Unless you count the 20 minutes I was asleep on the couch this afternoon.  I don't, because I regard that time as necessary for me to function for the rest of the day.  :-)

ANYway, here are some things I have been up to tonight:

Boiling my cloth diapers!  They have really been smelling strongly of ammonia, so Chris finally did a google search about how to strip diapers of their ammonia smell.  We are boiling ours for 30 minutes.  If you do this, and have PUL in the water, you have to let the water cool before you take the PUL out because it will deform if you take it out when it's hot.

Other things he found to do to reduce the ammonia build-up in the future is add vinegar to the cold rinse cycle before washing them.  Although, this is also said to be bad, because lots of vinegar in your washing machine can wear the plastic parts inside more quickly.  I'll let you wrestle about whether or not to do that on your own.  :-)

Also here are the leftovers from dinner:

Leftover rice with leftover chicken cut up in it, homemade tortillas, grilled peppers and onions, and carrots on the side.

A quick batch of chocolate pudding for dessert.

And finally, there are TWO full bags of apples in my kitchen waiting to be made into applesauce. The guy downstairs has an orchard at his house, and he just leaves them next to our door.  That pretty much rocks.  :-)

Have a great night!  Thanks for reading my update!  :-)

Green Bean Casserole

We keep getting green beans from our CSA.  Green beans seem easy enough.  My small problem-- my husband doesn't like green beans.  Not steamed up with butter and salt, anyway.  Usually when I get them, I will wash, cut and freeze them for soups in the winter.  Vegetable soup is a favorite at our house, and we eat it almost every week in the winter.

Well, tonight, I had TWO bags of green beans in my fridge (from last week and this week)... my in-laws were coming for a visit, and I (1) needed to use up my green beans and (2) needed to cook more food than usual.

I really like green bean casserole, but I don't use condensed soups OR those crunchy delicious onion thingys any more.  But, I had a hankering for green bean casserole. Oh, and did I mention that it was already 5 o'clock?  The rest of dinner was slated to be done around 5:45, so I needed to come up with something quick.  Luckily, Chris rinsed and de-stemmed the beans earlier in the day, knowing that I was going to use them. :-)

A quick google search brought up "Grandma's Green Bean Casserole."  It was four or five down on the list, but it was the first one that didn't mention Campbell's. Also, it says 'Grandma' in the title, which makes me automatically trust it just a little bit more.

I adapted Grandma's Green Bean Casserole to fit my ingredients and my time frame, and this is what resulted:

Janet's Green Bean Casserole
4 cups fresh green beans
2 TBS olive oil
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 TBS flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 cup yogurt
panko bread crumbs

Wash, de-stem and cut green beans into 1-2 inch pieces.  Steam until desired doneness (about 10 minutes for nice and soft). While beans are cooking, heat a cast iron skillet (or any 8" pan with tall sides) with the olive oil in it. Chop onion. Add onion to the oil. When onions are soft, sprinkle flour in the pan and whisk until smooth. Sprinkle in the salt.  Add the cooked green beans and the yogurt.  Toss to combine evenly.  Sprinkle generously with panko bread crumbs.  Put the top on the pan, turn burner to low, and simmer until dinner is ready.

This casserole was simple, flavorful, and quick.  I like that it didn't go in the oven, taking extra time and heating the kitchen more.  Also, the kids liked it-- ate their beans with no complaints, and all the adults had seconds-- except Chris!  :-)

ps. if you noticed, the original recipe calls for shredded cheddar, which would have been pretty good, but I didn't want to do one more step!  And cheese makes a lot of things more delicious, but in my opinion, it wasn't even missed in this recipe.

pps. I recently bought my first bag of panko bread crumbs, and while they are rather processed, they are certainly much better than the crunchy onion thingys I mentioned earlier! I will definitely be using them from time to time in the future to add some extra crunch to our meals.

Hog Maw Cabbage Rolls

Here is the story of I came up with this meal.  One night I was laying in bed thinking about what was going to be for dinner tomorrow.  (This has been my best strategy of late.  Planning dinner in bed the night before. It has really been working for me! I have time to mull over my options, think about what we have available, toy with a few different ideas... I can get out of bed to soak beans if I have to, or plan to soak them right when I get up... I can even make a last minute run to the store the next day if I need/ want to!)

I was listing all the available ingredients on hand in my head: "I really need to use up that cabbage, what could I do with it?  I could saute it, but what would we have with it?  What else do we have?  Oh, I bought a pound of meat the other day at the store.  What can I do with cabbage and meat? Well, I could make cabbage rolls, I guess.  They weren't a big hit last time... hmm, what can I do to make them more interesting?  We have potatoes... potatoes mixed with beef sausage makes yummie hog maw... I wonder if i could stuff cabbage leaves with the same filling?  Ok, let's go for it.  I will try it tomorrow."

The next day as I was planning my approach to this meal, I called my MIL to get her hog maw stuffing recipe (which really comes from her mom...) Basically, it's onions, potatoes and beef sausage all mixed together. Okay.  But I only have ground beef.  Must find beef sausage recipe.

Online I found a page with all kinds of beef sausage recipes.  I didn't really like any of them better than the others, so I used them as a basis and came up with my own seasoning recipe.

On to the sauce.  Will I use a tomato sauce in which to cook the cabbage? Yes.  Basic spaghetti sauce recipe.  

Once I figured out all the separate components to the recipe, it was time to actually put it all together.  Here's what happened:

Hog Maw Inspired Cabbage Rolls
1 lb ground beef
2 medium white or red potatoes
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
1+ tsp. salt
3/4 tsp paprika
1/8 tsp mace (if you don't have it, just leave it out, or use 1-2 shakes nutmeg)
1/4 tsp coriander
1/4 cup water
1/8 tsp cayenne
1/4 tsp fennel seeds

24-28 oz crushed tomatoes
1-2 cloves garlic
1 TBS olive oil
2 TBS chopped fresh basil
salt and pepper

cabbage leaves

Cube the potatoes (1/2 inch cubes). Dice the onion (small dice). Mix first 10 ingredients together in a bowl and set aside. Heat olive oil. Press or dice garlic and saute until fragrant, 30 seconds.  Add tomatoes, basil. Add salt and pepper to taste. Keep tomato sauce warmed on the stove. Assemble cabbage rolls: put about 1/8- 1/4 cup of the meat/potato mixture into the cabbage leaf.  Roll it up and put it in a 9x13 pan.  Repeat until the mix is gone and the pan is full.  Spoon sauce over the top. Cover with foil and bake at 300* for 1 1/2-2 hours.

Cabbage rolls are special because there is no way to get uniform ones!  Some of mine were really tiny and some were huge!  I just tried to fit as many in a row as possible and then when space got cramped in the pan I wedged them wherever I could.

My kids and my husband all gave this recipe rave reviews.  I will DEFINITELY be making this again!

Homemade Barbeque Sauce

The other day I wanted to make some grilled chicken, and add some pizzazz. I usually just grill the chicken... but I felt that would be boring this particular evening.  I thought of barbeque sauce because we were also having potato wedges and Chris and the kids love to dip their fries in barbeque sauce.

Again, I 'poked around on the internet' meaning, I googled "homemade barbeque sauce" and clicked on the first one.

I modified it, mostly because I didn't have enough ketchup to make the original recipe. (And also because it has WAY too much sugar for our family.) And I don't have red wine vinegar.

Here's what I came up with:

Homemade Barbeque Sauce
3/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup honey
3 TBS- 1/4 cup molasses
Generous TBS Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp ground mustard
1 1/2 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper

Whisk all ingredients together. Put on whatever you want!  Yum.

We really liked this.  Chris said if I hadn't mentioned it, he would have assumed it came from the store.  :-) I will definitely be making this again.

Roasted Tomatoes with Garlic Butter Spaghetti

This is one of our favorite summer meals.

The roasted cherry tomatoes come from our garden.  Some came from our CSA this time.  It is simple and easy to prepare, and filling for those summer nights when you have been outside all day and come in ravenous for dinner.  :-)

I roasted the tomatoes on a cookie sheet for about 1 hour at 250*. I only put salt and pepper on them, although sometimes I drizzle with olive oil and even some crushed red pepper spices it up a bit.

I cooked one pound of whole wheat spaghetti.

I melted one stick of butter and sauteed three cloves of garlic, although I would do six next time-- it hardly tasted of garlic.

I tossed it all together with 2 TBS of fresh chopped basil from my back porch and brought it to the table.

So easy, and so delicious.

Another variation of this meal is to make alfredo sauce to go with everything.  I personally love this!

Chicken-- what I do with it.

Last week sometime, I posted that I would write about what I do with a whole chicken when I buy a chicken. I will try to recap what I have done with the last few, so that you can maybe get some ideas. One thing I always do is make broth.  I have been making broth in my crock pot overnight with really great results.  I will go through that later too.

Chicken #1
Meal 1-- Roasted chicken, butternut squash, stuffing and gravy
Meal 2-- Salad with chicken, cous cous, hard boiled eggs and homemade Caesar dressing
Broth-- Three scant quarts canned

Chicken #2
Meal 1-- Roasted chicken, broccoli and french fries (potato wedges)
Meal 2-- Chicken tacos, rice pudding
Broth-- Four quarts canned

Chicken #3
Meal 1-- Chicken, quiona and chickpea pilaf
Meal 2-- Chicken and waffles, corn
Broth-- Four quarts canned

Chicken #4
Meal 1-- Chicken, mashed potatoes, cauliflower
Meal 2-- Chicken rice and corn soup
Broth-- Four quarts canned


Chicken #5
Meal 1-- Chicken, Carrots, asparagus, cranberry relish
Meal 2-- Beans and rice with chicken and spinach, green beans
Meal 3-- Chicken salad sandwiches, acorn squash
Broth-- Three or four quarts

So, I just went back through my food log calendar.  We have eaten six whole chickens this year so far (I only remember exactly what happened to five of them, so I didn't write down the sixth).

I would like to try and stretch more of my chickens to three meals and broth, but that requires me cooking the chicken and picking it and cooking something else that has chicken in it for dinner.  That is a lot of extra prep, that I have not had the time or energy to attempt recently.  I'm thinking we'll table that idea for the next five or six months at this point.  :-)

About my broth-- I have been using the crock pot to make my broth overnight, which is great, because I don't have to constantly check on it, and the stove doesn't have to be on, and I don't have to even be home if I don't want to be.  (Ask Chris about how I put on a pot of beans and took a nap and he came home to smoking beans on the stove because the water all cooked off.... oops.)

1. First I pick all the meat off the bones and put it in a bag or something to make into another meal.  
2. Then, I put the bones, a carrot or two, an onion (or half, if I'm feeling stingy), and a stalk of celery into the crock pot with about a tablespoon of salt.  I fill up the crockpot with water.  I add a tablespoon or two of apple cider vinegar to the water and leave it sit until I am ready to go to bed.  Adding the vinegar helps pull out the gelatin from the bones-- the part of broth that is really good for you.  I was skeptical of this step when I first started doing it recently (I read about it in Nourishing Traditions), but I kept doing it because the bones were actually kind of floppy when I fished them out the next day.  
3. Turn the crock pot on low at bedtime.  
4. In the morning, or whenever I get to it the next day, I strain it through a mesh strainer.  
5. Can or freeze the broth.  I usually can mine in quart jars, which I try to do as soon as I can after straining it, so it doesn't get cold.  But, you can also freeze it.  In that case, you will want to let it cool before putting it in containers and putting it in the freezer. 
6. Use broth to make delicious soups or when you are making rice for dinner. I have been using mine at lunch a lot to make quick soups that the kids really like.  Corn/peas/carrots/alphabet noodles is a favorite lunch time soup right now.  :-)

Well, I feel like this was a long and wordy post.  I hope you got something out of it, even if it was just a meal idea or a laugh at my stupidity with beans.  :-)

Happy cooking!

Chicken Tacos and Rice Pudding

Okay, I did some number crunching tonight after dinner because I was wondering if dessert would actually end up being more expensive than dinner!  Here's what I found: 

Chicken Tacos
1 Chicken Breast (from a whole chicken roasted yesterday)-- 3.00
1 cup chopped Spinach-- 0.85
1/2 cup stonyfield yogurt-- 0.40
24 tortillas

• 4 cups sprouted whole wheat flour-- 1.00
• 2 TBS organic palm shortening-- 0.20
• 1 tsp Real salt-- 0.02
• 2 tsp baking powder-- 0.20

1 Pepper-- 1.25
1 onion-- 0.75
1 cup uncooked rice (I actually cooked 2 cups, and used the rest for dessert...)-- 1.00
Total: 8.67

Rice Pudding
3 cups cooked rice-- 1.00
3 cups raw milk-- 1.32
2/3 cup organic raisins-- .56
1/3 cup maple syrup-- 1.50
Vanilla-- gift
1/2 tsp cinnamon-- 0.12
2 eggs-- .60
Total: 5.10

So, it turns out dinner was more expensive than dessert!  Also, there is enough rice pudding leftover for tomorrow night, so that's about $2.55 per dessert.

The chicken was roasted yesterday and then we used the leftover chicken for dinner tonight.  Also, I will make 4 quarts of broth out of the bones.  The chicken cost 12.00 for an organic whole chicken. I figured 3.00 for dinner last night, 3.00 for dinner tonight and then 1.50 per quart of broth I will make.  Not bad for one chicken.

Also, I was excited to find out how cheap it is to make tortillas!  $1.42!!! We only ate about half of the tortillas tonight and I will use the rest for lunches during the week.  They are cheaper than the bread I make because of the oil and honey in the bread. 

Okay, this has been another episode what things cost at Janet's house.  Thanks for playing! (Or, at least.... reading... )   :-P

I Love Canning

Here is just one more reason I love canning. 

The other day, I had no idea what to make for dinner.  I was already four o'clock and I couldn't thaw anything.  I needed something quick! 

First I peeked at my food log calendar-- the calendar that hangs in my kitchen and on which I write what we eat for dinner every day.  I'm not a great plan-a-menu ahead person-- you all may have figured that out by now-- but I do like to have a record of what we ate.  This helps so much on days just like this day when I was unprepared and needed to think of something but couldn't think.  I just used a meal that I made before.  (I usually try to make something that I made more than two weeks ago, so my family isn't grumbling at me--- Lentil Shepard's Pie AGAIN??!?)...

I found it-- butternut squash soup, biscuits, applesauce.  Perfect.  Then, I went to my cabinet and grabbed:

Canned chicken stock, canned crookneck squash and canned applesauce! While the soup was cooking, my little helper and I made some quick baking powder biscuits (using sprouted wheat flour!) and I even used my cast iron griddle for a cookie sheet-- no clean up!  Yes!

ps. two cooking tips are hidden in this post!  Get a food log calendar!  And use cast iron cookware for quick, easy (sometimes little or no) clean-up.

pps. Here is my butternut squash soup recipe (more or less) in case you are interested.  I used to look up recipes for this soup but by now it has kind of morphed into it's own thing.


Butternut Squash Soup
about 4 cups butternut squash
about 4 cups chicken (or beef or turkey) stock
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp kelp powder (Salty, also has iodine, since our salt doesn't)
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
two shakes or less red pepper flakes
1/2 cup of milk, or cream (if using cream, it will come out creamy using less, too-- one time I only had about 3TBS cream and it was still delicious!)

place all ingredients except cream/milk in stock pot.  heat to boil. reduce to simmer. use immersion blender to make smooth.  taste and adjust seasonings.  add cream.  serve. 

Lentil Shepard's Pie

The other day I was wanting to eat Shepard's pie.  However, I didn't really want to make a meat based one, because we had had meat the last two or three days in a row.  I really wanted this comfort food, but was trying to figure out how to make it vegetarian.  I thought, what about lentils?  (I make a killer "Sloppy Sam's" using lentils!)  Lentils are very high in protein, but rather inexpensive to buy.  I happened to have some, and we had not eaten them for awhile. That being said, I googled, "Lentil Shepard's Pie." 

Here is the recipe I found and everyone really enjoyed it.  Sam, my picky one ate his whole bowl the first night (But wouldn't touch it the next day for lunch.)

I changed the recipe just a bit.  Cut up a carrot and cooked it with the lentils. (Make sure you add the carrot right at the beginning of the cooking, because I didn't and then the carrots were not quite cooked.) I used earth balance instead of butter and unsweetened coconut milk instead of milk.  I left out the thyme and added about a 1/2 TBS Worcestershire sauce.  Then I sprinkled peas on top of the lentil layer instead of corn. 

I really enjoyed this lentil Shepard's pie recipe and I will definitely make it again.  Also, I want to try the 'black bean burgers' and the 'simple french lentil soup' recipe listed on this site.

Menu Plan... Kind of!

Hey, everyone!

I have finally come up with somewhat of a menu plan for the next week or so.  I had to go to the store, and I wanted to make sure I bought lots of fruits and veggies-- but also ones that I would use up in the next week or week and a half.  I didn't want to just buy veggies all "willy-nilly" and then not know what to do with them or never end up using them before they went bad!

So, here's the list of meals that I came up with to eat in the next week.

• Lentil Shepard's Pie (recipe coming tomorrow!) 
• Split Pea Burgers and spaghetti squash
• Spaghetti and Salad
• Vegetable soup
• Baked Beans with sweet potatoes and broccoli
• Indian Cauliflower and Potatoes with Indian veggie patties
• Bean soup 
• Pizza
• Farfalle with Broccoli

Yay!  This whole list is vegetarian.  Allright, I lied a bit.  The broccoli farfalle has anchovies.  :-) 

A new era

Well, folks,

Tonight was the first time that our small family of five finished an entire pound of pasta in one sitting.

Ben had three plates,
Sam had four bowls,
and Ellie had two.

So, we have entered a new era in the Good household.  :-)

Zucchini... Series, Part IV

I used my zucchini in a new and exciting way tonight for dinner! 

New to this series?  Check out the rest here, here, and here. :-)

Ok, so the actual prep on the zucchini itself is not a new concept.  But the combination of ingredients was weird and different, and... good!  So I will share it with you. 

Here is what I stacked on our plates for dinner tonight, starting from the bottom, going up.

Breaded, pan fried zucchini
Leftover pasta tossed in leftover vegan alfredo sauce (that's a post for another day!)
A slice of tomato
A fried egg

Let me tell you, it was definitely a weird combo, with the egg on top, but I thought the zucchini, pasta and tomato needed something.  And we like eggs.  And it just seemed to fit.  And, it did!  The flavors went really well together, and the three 'serious' eaters in the house (my husband, myself, and Benjamin) ate all of ours, and liked it. 

Do you have a new and exciting way to prepare zucchini? Please share!  I still have seven in my fridge! :-)

Zucchini... Series, Part III

Wondering what to do with all that zucchini?  Catch up on my other posts here and here!

Zucchini Patties -- These were inspired by this recipe for corn fritters. We ate them with our hands, but you could even serve them as a hamburger replacement-- on buns, with all the fixin's!
1 medium zucchini, shredded
1 cup (about) coarse bread crumbs (I used bread I had on hand and cut it into tiny pieces)
(1 egg) -- again, I would have used it if I'd had one!
1 1/2 cups millet flour, masa harina, or corn meal
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 tsp salt
garlic powder
-- beat the egg. mix the zucchini, bread crumbs and egg together.  mix the flour, water, salt and garlic powder together. this is where it gets messy. scoop out some zucchini mix with your hand (about an ice cream scoop's worth) and plop it into the flour mix.  then turn it over in the flour mix to coat the other side. then plop it into a heated cast iron skillet with some oil or palm shortening covering the bottom of the pan. flatten the blob into a patty looking shape. fry until golden brown and flip. fry the other side until golden brown.
-- this is messy.  don't say I didn't warn ya!  But it is good.  everyone liked them, and gobbled them all up!