tossed lettuce salad
watergate salad
deviled eggs and pickles
dill chicken pasta salad
strawberry pie
easter…..a lunch of salads
Author: lynley
meatless monday — potato soup
it just warms you as you eat it
why won’t winter just go away?! i’m ready to eat spring salads and drink mojitos on my balcony but when it’s sleeting, snowing and the wind is blowing at 40 mph spring salads and ice-cold drinks just won’t do. so out comes my big stock pot and in it goes vegetables a plenty to make a hearty soup. the latest and greatest was a potato soup. personally i like my potato soup extra creamy with loads of garlic and a good hearty helping of green onions. now to just take that big bowl of soup and cuddle up by the fireplace makes for a pretty good meatless monday…..oh yes spring i know is just around the corner!
meatless monday — sweet & sour tofu with ginger noodles
hand me a pair of chopsticks so i can dig in
on one of my many “work is canceled because of snow” days this winter, the activity i picked to do was to make homemade pasta. but why just make normal homemade noodles, let’s get creative folks. my decision to spice it up a bit was to add lots of ginger to my dough. the plan…..to create noodles that would go well with stir fry or any other asian dish i create. noodles were made, bagged and frozen. now it was time to use them. sweet and sour crispy tofu i thought would be a good dish to try with the noodles. i wanted to actually taste that ginger. i also made up a batch of steph’s cashew rangoon, although i substituted cashews for sun-dried tomatoes, and meatless monday was served. it was yum, no doubt, but next time more ginger is going into that dough.
meatless monday — personal pan pizza
oh how i miss pizza
its funny when you develop a food allergy what you end up missing that you can’t eat any more. pizza is a big one for me. yes i can make my own but i miss that frozen take and bake pizza, the ability to just order a pizza and have someone else do all the work, and the big thing have cheese that actually melts on the pizza. there are a few dairy-free frozen pizzas but honestly i have a hard time paying $10 for it and then when it says “cheese melts!” it never really melts just kind of warms up. this led me to an experiment, making my own personal pan pizzas that i freeze and then bake as i want them. i made up a batch of my whole-wheat honey pizza crust, which got me about 3, 6 inch pizzas, topped them with pizza sauce and several dairy-free cheeses, this i find is the key to get any sort of “melting” quality out of those cheeses. i decided to just stick with cheese pizza till i saw how well this whole experiment worked, and i also figured i could always add other toppings as i pulled them out of the freezer. that night however i baked one up for my meatless monday dinner. i made a marghertia pizza that fulfilled my pizza craving. now i love the idea that in my freezer are ready to be baked homemade pizzas that are just calling for future meatless monday dinners!
meatless monday — its a wee bit of Ireland!
you can’t go wrong with pie crust as part of your meal
St. Pat’s day fell on meatless monday this year. it was also the last day of my dad’s part-time retirement job. that meant a fantastic feast needed to be made. on the menu: homemade vegetable pot pies, carrots, homemade irish soda bread, vegetarian scotch eggs, and of course irish ale to drink. the parents came over for the dinner. i kept some of the ingredients secret such as the radishes ( mom does not like) in the pot pie and the vegetarian sausage (dad would have preferred real meat) in the scotch egg. i wanted them to eat the food and see if they liked it before they found out what the official ingredients were. and the end result?……..clean plates all around!
RECIPE: VEGETARIAN SCOTCH EGG
6 hard boiled eggs
1 12 oz package of vegetarian breakfast sausage
1 cup plain bread crumbs
1 cup vegetable oil
* heat oil in a saucepan over medium to medium-high heat
* make 6 balls out of the sausage, roll them out till they form a thin pancake
*fold the flattened sausage around the hardboiled egg, cover the entire egg, pat it well so it is secure
*roll the sausaged egg in the bread crumbs till all the sausage is covered
*once the egg has been bread crumbed place it in the hot oil, turn the egg so all the bread crumbs become a dark brown
*allow eggs to cool to room temp, put on some irish music and serve with spicy mustard
meatless monday: black bean, spinach and avocado enchiladas
el tacho night
with my various food allergies i’ve come to deem certain menu items as safe and or uncomplicated. for mexican food the easiest thing for me to alter is tacos but oh how i miss the ohey goey ness of enchiladas. so why not make them for meatless monday. i stuffed mine with refried black beans, fresh avocado slices and fresh spinach, made up a side of peach salsa mexican rice and who needs to go out for mexican food any more…not me!
requested bread recipes
keeping up with my new years resolution of working through the bread bible one recipe/week i’ve gotten a few requests for recipes from my instagram followers so here you go……
all recipes come from the bread bible by christine ingram and jennie shapter
COTTAGE LOAF
6 cups white bread flour
2 tsp salt
one package yeast
1 2/3 cups warm water
1. lightly sprinkle yeast package evenly over your measuring cup of warm water, allow to sit
2. preheat oven to 425 F
3. sift together salt and flour, form a well in the middle of your flour, pour in water and yeast mixture
4. mix flour and water together till forms a dough, knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for 8-10 minutes, place in an oiled boil and cover with oiled plastic wrap, leave to raise for 1 hour or until doubled in size
5. knock back dough and knead for 2-3 minutes, divide dough into to balls one large and one small
6. place the dough balls on lightly greased cookie sheets, place bowls over the top, allow to rise 30 minutes
7. gently flatten the top of the larger dough ball, with a sharp knife cut a cross in the top centre of the dough, brush with water and place the smaller ball on top
8. press a hole in the top of the small dough ball, lightly cut niches ever few inches around the dough balls for decorative edges, cover with oiled plastic wrap allow to sit 10 minutes
9. bake for 35-40 minutes until golden brown
WELSH CLAY POT LOAVES
flower pot bread
2 small flower pots – seasoned
1 cup wholewheat flour
3 cups white bread flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 package of yeast
2/3 cup warm milk
1/2 cup warm water
4 tbsp melted butter
1 tbsp chopped chives
1 tbsp parsley flakes
1 tsp sage
1 garlic clove — minced
fennel seeds for sprinkling
1. to season flower pots, clean pots, coat them with oil inside and out and bake for 35-40 minutes at 400, allow to cool once seasoned
2. sprinkle evenly the yeast package over the top of the warm milk, allow to sit. sift together flours and salt, make a well in the center of the flour. pour yeast-milk mixture into flour, evenly mix and allow to sit for 15 minutes
3. mix together butter and herbs. add water and butter-herb mixture to the flour mixture. mix till a dough forms. knead dough for 8-10 minutes.
4. place dough in an oiled bowl with oiled plastic wrap on top allow to rise for 1-1 1/2 hours or until doubled in size
5. knock back dough, divide into 2 balls and place each dough ball in an oiled flower pot, allow dough to rise to top of the flower pot, about 30-40 minutes
6. brush top of dough with water and sprinkle fennel seeds on, bake for 35-40 minutes 400 F or until golden brown
meatless monday: beans and quinoa
i love eating out of bowls
in grad school one of my stables for dinner was beans and rice. for meatless monday i thought i’d jazz that concept up with a little twist…. instead of rice i’d use quinoa, instead of black beans i’d use white beans. i seasoned the beans and quinoa with nutritional yeast, onions, and some garlic. to top it off a few boca veggie chunks, an old school favorite with a more grown-up twist. i also toasted up some of my homemade cheddar-onion bread and treated myself to a free state beer. ah mondays don’t get much better than that!
the year of the horse…..a feast for chinese new year
a dinner party is always the answer
while new year’s eve is a night for me, i figured why not make a new annual tradition of celebrating the chinese new year with a full-out dinner party. as i said in the invite “it’s the year of the horse so lets gallop into it my stuffing ourselves!” and that is exactly what we did. a pack of people showed up some even bearing chinese new year themed gifts…..Darsi brought me an authentic chinese fan and loren & michelle made up origami horses (yes we know its a japanese art form bought it was the idea of it) and decorated my apartment with them!
we almost didn’t fit around the table!
on the menu was: basil jasmine rice, vegetable dumplings, crispy tofu with a peanut ginger sauce, stir-fryed veggies, cashew rangoon and of course for dessert fortune cookies!
so much yum!
overall it was a grand success. our bellies were full, the laughter was plentiful and you know it’s a success when one of your guests informs you that “it was the best dinner party they had ever been too!” just wait till next year i’m seeing visions of fried rice, a duck stuffed full of oranges and chili peppers…..i might need to invest in a larger dining room table!
there always must be decorations
meatless monday: eggs bandito
i’m no ordinary egg, amigo
what is eggs bandito? why just my own little twist on the classic breakfast dish of eggs benedict. breakfast for dinner is one of my favorites. i love it because you can do the more complicated dishes that you just don’t have the time for at the crack of dawn….waffles, pancakes, biscuit sandwiches and hollandaise sauce. however while craving some eggs benedict i wasn’t wanting the ham and i wasn’t wanting the hollandaise i wanted something new! and along came “eggs bandito” an english muffin topped with guacamole, a poached egg and creamy spicy queso dip. needless to say it was a fiesta of flavors!
Hearty Eaters 