Carrot-Celery Soup

Carrot-celery soup with a dollop of Greek yogurt

I was in the mood for a soul-warming soup for lunch today so I looked in the fridge and came out with carrots, celery, and apricots.

Ingredients

Equal amounts of carrots and celery.  I used 3 large mutant carrots and 1/3 of a bundle of celery

5 dried apricots (40 grams)

1 bay leaf

1 tablespoon dried curry powder

salt and pepper to taste



Peel and chop carrots, celery and apricots.

Add chopped carrots, celery and apricots to a medium sauce pan, add 4 cups of water, a bay leaf and a tablespoon of dried curry powder.

Bring to a boil, cover and turn heat down until soup is simmering.  It took about an hour for all the veggies to become super tender. 

I like my soups pured and creamy.  And the kids don't like chunks of veggies so I poured the mixture, minus the bay leaf, in my high-speed blender.

Blend soup, pour back into pan and season with a bit of salt and pepper.



Soup with a dollop of sour cream and tropical fruit smoothie

My poor photographic skills don't do this soup any justice - in real life, this soup was way more orange and prettier!  Along with a bit of sour cream or yogurt stirred in, this soup came out smooth and rich and deliciously creamy.  I'll be making this again as I usually have all these ingredients on hand, ready to whip up on a cold winter day.  For a summer time dish, the veggies could be quick cooked in a pressure cooker and served cold, along with a bit of Greek yogurt.

Astrid

Crazy Good Kale Chips

Kale chips

I don't seem to tire of this recipe - kale chips, who knew? It might have something to do with a cup of cashews, but that's between you and me shhhhhh.....

kale, red bell pepper, garlic, nutritional yeast, chili powder, garlic, lemon juice, and cashews

For each bunch of kale, blend the following in a high speed blender until smooth
1 cup of cashews (raw or salted, just adjust salt as needed)
tsp of minced garlic
2-3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons chili powder, a pinch of cayenne pepper is nice too if you like spicy food
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
salt and pepper to taste

Remove the ribs from the kale and place on a large sheet pan.  Massage the sauce into the leaves and spread out on the sheet.  You could serve the sauce as a dip for veggies or chips, it's delicious (remember the cashews?)!

ready for the oven

Bake in a medium/300F oven, turning the leaves over every 10 minutes until crispy.  You'll need to check every now and then because burnt kale is nasty.

half way through baking

Serve warm or at room temp.


Kale chips in all their glory

I had mine with an egg.  Refridgerate left over kale.

Back to left-over turkey and fixings tomorrow, it's another day after all!

Astrid

Peanut Butter and Chocolate

Peanut Butter

I've made various forms of nut butter including brazil nut and cashew, and the variations including spicy chili and nutella flavors but I've never made "real" peanut butter.

Starting with a cup of roasted, salted peanuts, I ground them into butter with a tsp of Walnut oil in a small Vitamix container.

It was deliciously smooth and salty.  Not like Jiff, which is creamy and sweet.

One of my kids tried it and thought it tasted good - phew, one convert. 

Astrid

Day 19 - Monday....

I tend to feel more hungry on Monday mornings, probably due to all the extras I eat over the long weekend.  I'm lucky to work a schedule that allows me to have every other Friday off from work.  With the extra time at home, I tend to cook and bake more elaborate meals.  There is also more bike riding and exercising to keep weight in check but I think my stomach gets used to more food over a long weekend and a Monday always seems to be an adjustment.

Lunch is going to be another packet of Tasty Bites.  I haven't tried this flavor yet but it has a lot going for it - cashews! An entire packet contains
280 calories
20 g fat
18 carbs/8 g fiber
8 protein

The ingredients are: water, green peas, tomatoes, onion, fenugreek, greens, cashew, spinach, cream, watermelon seeds, sunflower oil, salt, garlic, ginger, spices.  Works for me.  I'll catch up on animal protein for dinner, which I tend to find more filling.

Breakfast - 4 leftover chard quiche - equivalent of 2 eggs, splash of milk, bit of cheese (200?)

Lunch - V8 (30) and Tasty Bite Agra Peas and Greens (whole packet) (280)

Snack Buddy - small handfull of cashews (150)

Dinner - 1/2 small can salmon (100), guac, raw swiss chard, few fried potatoes, almonds (400)

For a daily total of about 1300 calories.  I had a few oven fried potatoes and the kids also had a smoothie and baked fish sticks.  This is another really cool hand made pottery bowl by Denise Kleiner.

The smoothie was made with a frozen packet of achia berry mix for 1, red apple, can of pineapple, few leaves and stalks of swiss chard, and some water, all lovingly mixed in the vitamix.  Split between 5 people.

Astrid

Green Tomato Chili

Green Tomato Chili with corn chips, cheese, sour cream and guac

Chili with cilantro - the "diet version"

With an incredibly mild Fall, we are left with a pan of green tomatoes even though it's past the middle of October already.  Craig had been hankering for some chili so I decided to use the green tomatoes in the recipe to use them up.

Soak 3 cups of dried beans overnight.  I used a combination of pinto, kidney and black beans.  This swelled up to about 6 cups.  A few cans of beans could be used too.  After soaking, cook the beans until done.  I used my trustee pressure cooker - takes about 45 minutes.

Use a few cans of crushed tomatoes or tomato sauce or grind up 8 cups of tomatoes in a Vitamix.

Brown 2 pounds of beef -chunks or ground, in a large stock pot with a swig of oil, onion, garlic, bell peppers, and a jalapeno pepper. 

Do not drain any of the fat, add 2 tsp of cumin seeds, a table spoon or 2 of chili powder, 2 teaspoons of paprika, 2 teaspoons of cumin powder, salt and pepper.  Fry a minute or so until fragrant, then add in the tomatoes, canned or sauce, green or red!

Cook for an hour or so until flavors are blended and some of the liquid has evaporated.  While the green tomato sauce tasted tomatoey, it was pretty mild so I added a squeeze of double tomato paste to the mix.

This is what it looked like after about an hour of simmering.  The beans are still cooking in the pressure cooker.

Beans are super soft. Add beans to chili and continue to simmer until you can't take the aroma and more and must eat now.  I added some more chili powder, salt and pepper.  Six cups of beans are bland.

Chili is always better when allowed to slowly simmer and especially reheated the next day.  If you're impatient like me.  This whole process takes about 3 hours.  I started at 9:00 this morning and served the chili for lunch by noon along with some shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, cilantro, guacamole, and corn chips.

Astrid

Dutch Apple Baby

Kristoffer has been wanting a Dutch Apple Baby ever since he saw the picture in the Vitamix recipe binder.  I tried it out this morning and it didn't turn out as spectacular as the photo.....not sure what went wrong.  Kris liked it and quickly ate a piece but I'm not sure I'll make this one again.  Except for this one, all the other recipes in the binder have come out with great success so maybe it was the chef? If you're interested in the recipe, leave me a comments and I'll email it to you. 

Astrid

If You Need an Excuse to Buy a Vitamix - Here it is....Hummus!

For years I've been making hummus, using the traditional ingredient called tahini as part of the recipe.  And as you know, tahini is a bit expensive, see add on the left sidebar.  It's the brand I use.  Tahini is a sesame paste, sort of like peanut butter, made from toasted sesame seeds. 

A few weeks ago I made hummus using my usual recipe in the Vitamix and it was a wonder - incredibly smooth - oh yeah....I thought I had justified my Vitamix.

Today, I was on the Paupered Chef's blog  and he was lamenting his difficulties making tahini and I remembered that I was intending to try the Vitamix version of hummus that uses sesame seeds instead of tahini.

When I got home from work, I whipped up a batch of hummus in the Vitamix using sesame seeds instead of tahini.  And let me tell you, it's great.  The Vitamix makes the smoothest hummus, even when starting with sesame seeds, not tahini!  The cost of using sesame seeds over tahini over the 7 year warranty of a Vitamix probably makes up for a few hundred dollars.  I'll do the math later to justify to myself that the Vitamix was a great purchase, but for now....bring out the chips!

Recipe
In a Vitamix or other high speed blender, and in this order, add to container

2 cans of chickpeas, one drained and one with liquid
1/4 cup raw sesame seeds (I used toasted as it was all I had and the hummus was still smooth)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 garlic, peeled
1 tsp of cumin
salt to taste

Blend on high speed for a minute and be prepared to be amazed!

Astrid

Baby Rhubarb-Apple Pies

Rhubarb-Apple Pies

The boys were asking for pies - their timing was perfect.  With a frost coming, it was time to bring in the last bounty of the garden.  The rhubarb was a little green and the apples a bit pecked and bruised.

I cleaned and chopped the fruit and pureed it in a Vitamix.  The fruit before blending measured 8 cups (2 liters).  I added a 1/4 cup water, 1/2 cup sugar, sprinkle of cinnamon and a pinch of salt to the puree and cooked in a sauce pan until more like applesauce.  I wanted the pies to be like jam tarts but if you wanted a chunkier fruit pie, the apples and rhubarb could be coarsely chopped and stewed instead.  Before cooking, the mixture was green (rhubarb) and red flecks (apple skin).  Any fruit jam could be substituted instead of homemade rhubarb.

 I used a standard large double-crust pie recipe from Betty Crocker and added a 1/4 cup sugar.  When the dough just came together, I gently cut and rolled the dough into 12 balls and placed them into a standard muffin tray to chill in the fridge while the sauce continued to cook a bit more and then cool.

Preheat oven to 350F.  After the dough has chilled and the sauce cooled.  Roll each dough ball into a palm-sized circle and place back into the muffin pan.  After cooking, the sauce became more caramel colored then green.  Fill each pie with rhubarb-apple sauce.  There was plenty of sauce left over for another day.

Bake for 45 minutes until the crust turns light brown and the fruit sauce bubbles.  Cool pies in the muffin tin set on a wire rack.

 I served the pies with a  sprinkle of powdered sugar.

Astrid

Day 10 - In the Groove

The breakfast of champions!  28 grams of cashew pieces and coffee  - 160 calories.  That will keep me distracted until lunch.  I find it helpful to measure my food every now and then to remind me what an ounce/28 grams looks like.  And it's not a very big handful.  I have big hands and I could probably scoop up twice as much if I use a "hand" as a guide.

Lunch at North Side Grill on Broadway.  Had a bowl of chili, a few fries, a bite of pancake, a taste of corned beef hash, and some hash browns.  Tasting is going to do me in!

Dinner was a few leaves of swiss chard rolled up with homemade pesto.  We grew the basil and chard.  Also had a bowl of soup made from some end of the season tomatoes and carrots.

To make the soup, in a Vitamix or other high speed blend - add left over, marginal tomatoes and a wilted carrot or 2, a handful of raw cashews, clove of garlic, sprinkle of curry powder, and a splash of olive oil.  Blend until smooth.  Simmer on low, stirring occasionally.  Serve hot or cold.  I re seasoned with more curry powder, salt, pepper, and a few red pepper flakes for my bowl.

The blender container was about 3/4 full with chopped vegies and not even half full when pureed.  So this made a little less than 4 cups which I turned into 4 servings.

Astrid