Quinoa!

Quinoa (pronounced Keen-wa) is apparently an amazing miracle grain full of protein and able to make you leap tall buildings in a single bound. I mostly just think it is tasty and I like it a lot better than cous cous so I use it in many cous cous applications.

I have only had it hot until recently, but then I realized I could make quinoa in my rice cooker which doesn't heat up the kitchen and THEN I could put the quinoa in the fridge, making an excellent summer dinner. Here is my improvised quinoa salad.



Yummy Summer Quinoa Salad
(partially inspired by this one, on The Picky Palate)

1 cup uncooked quinoa
2 cups water
1 orange sweet pepper, chopped kinda small
2 scallions, chopped, both white and green parts
1 avocado, chopped
1 small can mandarin oranges
1/2 a jalapeno (if you dare. Mine was really mild.)
1 tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 tablespoon Balsamic Vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons sesame oil

First, unless you have indication that your quinoa was pre-rinsed, put it in a mesh colander and run a bunch of water over it. It can have a bitter/soapy taste if you skip this step. Rinse rinse rinse.
Next, put the quinoa and the water in your rice cooker and turn it on. In 15 or so minutes you will magically have cooked quinoa. If you don't have a rice cooker, simmer the quinoa and the water on the stove. Really, it cooks just like rice.
Let the quinoa cool some and put it in a big bowl. Add all the veggies and oranges. In a small bowl, mix the olive oil, vinegar, sugar and sesame oil. Pour this over the quinoa and veggies and stir it all up. Put in the fridge for a bit and eat! Yum!

I did find this a little too sweet, so next time I will decrease the sugar by about half. You might want to start with that. Also, I meant to add fresh mint but forgot. It would be good though! Throw some in! Or parsley even.



I cooked the corn one of my two favorite ways. #1 is grilled, but here I steamed the corn. The idea is from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Basically, put the corn in a big pot with like an inch of water, cover, and cook for like 15 minutes. I think it is sweeter and more tender than boiling the corn in a huge pot of water and it takes less water and is therefore faster.

Shahi paneer

R came across some paneer on sale at the grocery store, so we decided to try a new to us Indian recipe. Here is some shahi paneer; a dish with paneer (Indian cheese) and a tomato based sauce. It was pretty easy and I thought it was pretty flavorful. R thought it needed more spices, but to me it was good for an every day supper. I've put the recipe below. If you think your palate is more like R's than mine, feel free to increase the spices, especially the chili powder.



Shahi paneer recipe
(Adapted from Allrecipes.com)
Ingredients:
2 tbs vegetable oil
1 large onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp chili powder
4-5 Roma tomatoes, pureed
1/2 lb. paneer, cubed
1/4 c water
1 tsp sugar
salt to taste
1/4 c cream
at least 2 tbs chopped fresh cilantro

Directions:
Heat the oil over medium heat. Cook the onion and garlic in the oil until the onions are golden brown -- about 10 minutes (less if you have a more powerful stove). When the onions are brown, add the cumin, coriander, turmeric and chili powder. Stir it all around and cook until the spices are fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Add the pureed tomatoes and cook about 5 minutes, stirring a few times, until some of the liquid evaporates and the oil begins to separate out. You'll see a few pools of oil forming. Add the paneer, water, sugar and salt. From this point on stir gently so that the paneer does not break up too much. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the paneer absorbs the tomato sauce and turns kind of orange-ish, about 10 minutes.

Lower the heat to a simmer and add the cream while stirring. Simmer about 5 more minutes. Remove from the heat, add the cilantro and serve.

We served this with store bought naan and jasmine rice. Yum yum.

Also, we are still on the hunt for a muttar paneer recipe, so if you have one, let me know!

Harvest time!

So it was getting dangerously close to frosty time and I was going away for the weekend. As head gardener, it was my job to decide if we should bring in the green tomatoes on our porch or not. I decided better safe than sorry, and picked them all. I also picked the basil and spent the Thursday before my trip making some pesto. The pictures show the lovely fruits of the garden.

It turns out that I don't think it has actually frosted here yet. We are close to the lake, and thus are temperatures are often 10 degrees off those inland. It has been cold and rainy, though, so I am going to believe the tomatoes would not have ripened anyway and that I made the right call.

We had a super tasty dinner the other night of the green tomatoes sauteed and mixed with angel hair pasta and the homemade pesto. Yum.

nom nom nom

R and I don't really celebrate our wedding anniversary, because although we partake in the institution and are into each other, we are not into legal marriage per se. I feel like I always totally shock people when I say this, but there you go. Legal marriage -- I could take it or leave it.

BUT my parents and R's parents celebrate our anniversary and send us gifts, which is awesome. Thanks to their very generous gifts we were able to go out to this restaurant last night and enjoy 5 amazing and tasty courses of vegetarian food. And a bottle of wine. We called it a celebration of our mutual awesomeness.

I don't think I've ever gotten the tasting menu at a restaurant before because they often contain meat. It was super to have dishes just appear before me, each one super tasty in its own way. I have been vegetarian for over 14 years now and I don't at all feel limited by it on a daily basis. I don't feel like it is any kind of sacrifice. It is nice, however, to periodically go to a restaurant where there is a whole menu of stuff for me to order or where I can just let the waiter bring me anything and I know I will be able to eat it.

Food

Once before, Ellen asked me to write about the tasty meals R and I make and since I only live to please Ellen, here are few.

They are all from Martha Stewart's "Everyday Food" magazine. I got a subscription to this magazine in order to use up some frequent flier miles that were going to expire. At first I was skeptical. I mean, I like Martha and all, but the magazine is Reader's Digest sized and looked like something sold at the grocery store checkout (like all those 100 Best Cakes! little booklets, or Prevention or something). But I cut out some tasty looking recipes, and by now we have made several that have all been really good. Seriously. There was one recipe that was merely 'meh' but everything else has been super tasty and pretty easy. Also, Martha kindly shares the recipes on the internets, so I can point them out to you.
Warm Spinach Salad with Fried Egg
Red-Leaf Salad with Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Bourbon-Pecan Truffles
Portobello, Broccoli and Red Pepper Melts

Enjoy!

Thanksigiving! And Conferences!

I had a great time at my conference in San Francisco. I knew more people than I realized and enjoyed seeing a little bit of SF. My poster went well -- I had some people come talk to me and my poster neighbor asked me for tips, as mine was so attractive. I have to say, I loooove conferences so much. Each year I know more and more people so it is a time to catch up with people I don't see regularly. Also, I think I am better at talking about my research than writing about it, so posters and talks are a great vehicle for me. Conferences also always inspire me to get back into my own work, which I am hoping to do soon. I did come away with a whole new way to kind of frame my diss. I think I was lost in the trees and was not seeing the forest.

The other thing going on right now is Thanksgiving! R and I are hosting a bunch of international students. We are in the midst of baking pies, and R is trying to de-frost the turkey in prep for brining. I made the most complicated pumpkin pie recipe ever. Seriously, it took me like 2 hours to just make the filling and the crust. Unless it is the most amazing pie ever, I will not be making it again. We'll see.

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving with great people to celebrate with!

Recipe

So we have come to less than 3 weeks until moving, which means time to clean out the freezer/fridge! I have had two bags of cranberries in the freezer since thanksgiving. I love cranberries and always meant to make a tasty sauce to put on yogurt for my breakfasts, but I am lazy so I never did. Yesterday I made Fresh Cranberry Relish from the Food Network and it is super good. I used Triple Sec instead of Grand Marnier, as that is what I had (also contributed to using up some of our extra liquor). Anyway, I love this recipe -- easy, no cooking, and I have been eating it out of a bowl with a spoon, as well as mixing a bit with my yogurt this morning. It is more on the tart side, so add more sugar if you like your cranberries more sweet. I did add some honey since the cranberries and the yogurt together were extra tart.

Tragedy

I was all set to have a super tasty dinner of Morningstar fake chicken, sun dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, green garlic and roasted asparagus all sauteed up together and served over spaghetti squash. I cooked my spaghetti squash whole, as I am not to be trusted with knives and hard to cut produce such as squash. I took my perfectly baked squash out of the oven and cut it up, only to find it was all sprouted inside. And then, I tasted some and it was sooooo bitter. Gross. So I had to have my topping just in a bowl with nothing to put it over. It was tasty, but would have been better with the squash. That is my dinner tragedy.

Mmm...cupcakes

Mmm...These are some cupcakes I made a few weeks ago. One of my favorite food blogs is the Cupcake Bakeshop by Chockylit. These are the Sweet and Salty Honey Peanut Cupcakes. They were very tasty, but I think the cake could be a little more moist and I would add more peanuts to the inside. And salt. But still, they were super good. If you want an amazing cupcake, though, make the ricotta raspberry almond cupcakes. I didn't do the burnt almond layer and just used store bought vanilla frosting but they were sooooo good. Seriously, I was shocked they came out of my kitchen.

tasty dinner!

farmermarketdin
Originally uploaded by mnkgrl

This was our dinner on Saturday: roasted potatoes and asparagus, grilled onions, grilled portabello "steaks" marinated in a red wine sauce and Italian bread made with semolina flour. Everything except the sour cream on this plate was from the Farmer's Market. Ever since I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle I have been trying to go to the Farmer's Market each week. It can be a struggle as it is on Saturday morning, but I think I have made it most weeks I've been in town. There are still not a lot of vegetables in season, but I was proud we could make a dinner out of the market trip this week.

We almost repeated the feat tonight as well. We had the rest of the asparagus (roasted again) in an omelet with spaghetti squash (from the farmer's market) and marinara on the side. I do try and buy local eggs, but the omelet ones were from the grocery store, although allegedly "cage free".

Saturday!

Happy Saturday! It is a beautiful day here. R and I went to the farmer's market today -- they still don't have much, but we got some apples and some asparagus which was picked yesterday. yum yum. The asparagus will be for dinner. On the way home we walked around the grounds of the Cloisters and saw some amazing flowers and flowering trees. I forgot my camera so no photos. Tomorrow we are going to the Bronx Zoo. I have never been before and am allegedly supposed to take my fall class there, so we are going to scope it out.

Speaking of vegetables, we're trying to join a CSA. We don't eat enough veggies so we are hoping that pre-paying and getting them will force us to eat them before they go bad. And the pickup location is right next to our apartment. Convenient! Anyway, I say hoping because I mailed the check yesterday so it will get there right at their cut off date AND all the other CSAs in hte area or filled, so I hope they have room for us.