Curry Chicken Soup and Rosemary Almonds

Continuing my healthy lunches and snacks for work, I made a Curry Chicken Soup and Rosemary Almonds today.  I've cooked oatmeal with golden raisins and dried cherries for breakfast for the week--each morning they'll go in the microwave and just get some skim milk added.  I'll pack a slice of whole-grain toast with a light spread of peanut-butter and add a banana at work for a mid-morning snack. My soup will be a light lunch.  In the afternoon I'll have a cup of hot sweet tea with a handful of rosemary almonds.  After school I'll eat a pear or apple to hold me until a light dinner. 

Curry Chicken Soup

I've made of a habit of prepping all veggies before I start cooking:

The ingredients are:

1 pound cooked chicken (I used rotisserie chicken this time--had some leftover)
2 chopped yellow onions
4 large chopped carrots
l large potato cubed.  I used Idaho Russet
2 cups cauliflower florets
1 cup frozen peas
1 32 oz. box chicken stock or broth
1 cup water
2-3 Tblsp. Olive oil
2 tsp. curry powder
salt and pepper to taste

Swirl some olive oil into a large dutch oven. Add the carrots and onions and sautee about 5 minutes until softened.  Add the curry powder and potato with 1 cup stock and 1 cup water.  Simmer, covered, about 10 minutes until the potatoes and carrots are soft.  Use an immersion blender to puree the soup in the pot.  (Or cool slightly and puree in a blender and return to the pot.)  Add the rest of the stock with the cauliflower florets.  Cover and simmer until the cauliflower is tender, about 20 minutes.  Taste and add salt and pepper to taste.  Add the peas and chicken and simmer about 5 more minutes.  Check for salt and flavor.  To serve, sprinkle some grated parmesan on top if desired.  Cool and pack into individual servings in small canning jars to take to work and refrigerate. 
I love the creamy yummy texture of this soup when the carrots, onions and potato are pureed together.  Another of my favorite soups now. (This recipe was adapted from my Reader's Digest book of Food Cures.)

The Rosemary Almonds are from a recipe I found
 in my Williams-Sonoma Christmas Entertaining cookbook.  I mixed 3 Tblsp. olive oil with 2-1/2 cups almonds and fine seasalt.  I mounded it with 4 sprigs of rosemary onto a cookie sheet and roasted it for 15 minutes.  I stirred it and roasted 10 minutes more.  I'll take handfuls of these almonds to work and snack on them with my afternoon tea.  I love these.

Healthy Food Snacks

I was away a few days visiting my daughter. Knowing I was coming back home to my New Year goal of healthy eating again, I thoroughly enjoyed my Shepherd's Pie at the Irish Pub, The Harp, followed by a double dip from Baskin-Robbins. I'm back and I need to make lunches and snacks for work. Since I've been away, I'm not  ready to go for groceries yet. I think "Chopped"--use what you have to make two nutrition-rich snacks and a healthy lunch for the three days left of the week!!  I look in the fridge and find a butternut squash, broccoli, carrots, some leftover green beans and tomato sauce. I have the usual pantry items.  I clean and slice the two carrots onto a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and slide into a 400 deg. oven.  I roast them about 10 min.  I add broccoli florets, also drizzled with oil and sprinkled with salt.  I let that roast about 10 more minutes and add some red pepper flakes and pine nuts and stir the mixture.  I let that roast until the vegetables are tender. It's bright, colorful and really good. I pack it into containers to eat for after-school snacks.

Since I'm trying to lower my cholesterol and beans are good for that as well as good protein, I saute some onions in olive oil in a pan on the stove, I add a can of rinsed roman beans and throw in those leftover green beans. 

After sauteeing a few minutes with some salt and freshly-ground pepper, I add some tomato sauce,  and simmer until it thickens.  I sprinkle some grated Parmesan cheese on top and scoop it into little jars to take to school for one of my snack breaks.

I pack some tortilla chips to munch with these.

Finally, I make some Butternut Squash Soup to take for my actual lunches.  The recipe I use is below.

Walnuts make a tasty munchie to eat along with this soup.

Butternut Squash Soup

2 Tblsp. extra-virgin olive oil

1 large yellow onion, peeled and chopped

2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

1 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. freshly-ground black pepper

1/2 tsp. garam masala

dash ground ginger

dash ground cloves

1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded and diced (about 6 cups)

2 cans (14-1/2 oz. ea.) Vegetable Stock

In a heavy dutch oven, saute the onion and garlic in the heated oil.  Add the spices. Stir.  Add the squash and saute about 10 minutes.  Add the stock and simmer until tender.  Use a hand-held immersion blender to puree the soup. I like to leave some texture in the soup. 

This makes about 4 servings.

Notice that I use small canning jars as my containers.  They are great to eat out of cold, or remove the metal lids and microwave right in the jar and eat right out of it heated.

It looks like I took a lot of food to work, but it's all healthy--just brimming with color. Snacks don't have to be celery and carrot sticks.  My quantities are small and so full of flavor, I don't need more.

After a day like this, all I want for dinner is a salad with a small piece of fish or lean meat.











New Year's Goals 2012

"Decide what to be and go be it." I found that quote on a blog and pinned it to my inspired board on Pinterest. That's pretty much how I approach each new year.  It's a chance to reinvent myself every year.  What I'm going to be in 2012 and how:

addicted to healthy choices
         buy local and cook seasonal, emphasis on heart-healthy and low cholesterol foods
         exercise for health and flexibility
photography
         get to know my camera
         capture moments and unexpected views
foodie
         "cook without recipes"
         start with soups, sauces and breads
knitter
          knit for babies
          knit for Christmas gifts
organized
          this is an ongoing battle
adventurer
          "yes" to new things

So to start on the goals, I will continue what I started last year--preparing my foods for a week ahead to carry to work to make eating healthy easier during the workweek.  Breakfast this week will be the wonderful cholesterol-lowering oatmeal.
To make the mornings easy, I cook for the weekdays on the weekend.  I round up 5 microwave-safe bowls for the oatmeal.

I use regular oats that require 5 minutes of cooking time and regular or golden raisins--favorite is a mix of both.

I cook oatmeal using a little less than the amount of water suggested on the box.  I like the oatmeal to be a thicker texture.  I add the raisins when the oatmeal is almost done so I don't get raisin-flavored oatmeal--just oatmeal with softened raisins. 

 I pack the cooked oatmeal into bowls and let them cool, cover and refrigerate.

I pack one in my lunch every day.  At work I keep milk in a small refrigerator.  I heat the oatmeal in a microwave and add milk.

I love this breakfast and it's quick and healthy every morning.

Happy Nutella Day!

Mmmmmmm, my favorite way to eat Nutella is with a jar and a spoon!  Everything else is just a distraction.

But in honor of World Nutella Day , I melted some Nutella with a little heavy whipping cream and dipped fresh fruit in it.

Strawberries would have been my first choice but I didn't have any strawberries when I realized it was World Nutella Day.  It turned out oranges are luscious.  Grapes are ok, cookies too sweet, but the unexpected burst of juicy, tangy orange following the first soft, smooth, melty Nutella sensation. . . I cried.

World Nutella Day was started in 2007 by Ms Adventures in Italy and Bleeding Espresso.  Thank you!  My adventures in using Nutella beyond my teaspoon are about to begin.

Making Cultured Butter

It had been many years since I made butter.  When I was little we had a cow and making butter was just a chore.  We had a glass churn with a dasher that we used.  When the glass broke, we just put cream in a quart jar and took turns shaking it until it became butter.  When I came across this challenge at the site of forging fromage I started looking for cream that was not ultra pasteurized.  I found some at my farmer's market. (Although girlichef informed me she was able to make it from ultrapasteurized cream.)

The instructions say to add some plain whole-milk yogurt to heavy cream and allow it to sit a day.  

The second day you just use a mixer, whip and "presto" butter forms! The butter has now separated from the "buttermilk."  The buttermilk is poured off.  The butter is rinsed several times in ice water.  With each rinse you work the butter with your hands or a paddle under the ice water to try to get out all the buttermilk.  

Then you can add salt and any herbs or flavorings you want.

The only thing I added to my butter was salt, and I poured the buttermilk into the jar the cream came in.

I'll use the buttermilk for pancakes or some other recipe and we're totally enjoying the butter already.  I just added salt to it.  This was fun to do, although a bit expensive for two pints of the wonderful cream.   

See the site for more details if you want to try this yourself.         

Baking "The Baker's Dozen Cookbook"

A new challenge I've decided to undertake is learning to bake good basic cakes.  After taking the summer off from bread-baking, I'm missing my breads and ready to begin that challenge again--BBA.  In addition I'm going to bake my way through this book:

This book was put together by a group of well-known bakers who have chosen their favorite recipe for a variety of cakes, pies, breads and other desserts.  The book is filled with the basic information that explains the techniques that will give the best results and the reason they work.  There aren't a lot of pictures, but there is a great deal of information.  I'm planning to bake something from the book every other week until I've gone through the whole book.  My first choice was the first cake in the book, "Our Favorite Butter Cake."  I got all my best ingredients set up--everything at room temperature because that makes the batter "blend smoothly."

YES, that's my old sifter!  I haven't used it in ages but I'm told it's important, not only to mix the dry ingredients well, but to aerate them.  So I sifted:

The butter had to be beaten until light in color and then the sugar added in a steady stream following by mixing 4 to 7 minutes more.  The book explains the importance of this step in creating millions of tiny air bubbles to create a light cake.

The eggs are also added a little at a time to prevent curdling of the mixture.  (Although if the batter curdles, the book gives a solution.)  The rest of the recipe explains the reason for adding the dry ingredients alternately with the wet ingredients.  I find it much easier to follow instructions if I understand the reasons for them.  After following every little instruction, I pulled a perfectly-risen level-to-the-top-of-the-cakepan yellow butter cake out of the oven.

Now remember that chocolate you saw in the ingredients picture?  That was for the icing.  I had no particular plan in mind for the icing so I made one of the chocolate icings.  For the first time ever I didn't have any confectioner's sugar in the pantry, so I chose the rich Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.  It took a LOT of rich semisweet chocolate:

The recipe was extremely complicated, involving melting chocolate in a double boiler, simmering sugar and cream of tartar in water to the soft ball stage, beating egg yolks over simmering water and whipping everything together with softened butter.  This icing was too rich and chocolatey for my light tender cake.  I felt it overwhelmed it and was far more chocolate richness than I wanted on a piece of cake.  I can see it on a rich, heavy chocolate cake of which one would eat a small slice, but I would try the lighter chocolate icing recipe next time for a light cake.

I love this cookbook--it reads like a class in baking.  I think, in time, you could create your own recipes after mastering the basics in here.

Cooking the Books - Cheese Vali Gobi

There isn't much I enjoy doing more than reading a really good book--unless it involves food.  To read a good book ABOUT food is almost more than I can stand.  So when I came across this Cook the Books Club I had to join in.  Every other month a new book is selected and the challenge is to prepare a dish that was inspired by that book. 
The book selected for this month is Climbing The Mango Trees by Madhur Jaffrey.  Climbing The Mango Trees is an insight into India's history through the eyes of a young girl. She reminds us that beneath the politics and the violence of a troubled nation, there are children. They want to play and they want to eat and they pay close attention to the details of their days. I was touched by how memorable the family picnics and the foods of her girlhood were to Jaffrey.  She loved her own Indian dishes and she thoroughly loved tasting the foods of her school friends that were different from hers. She describes all of those in wonderful detail.  I remember my own childhood as a newcomer to this country, bringing my lunch to school where it was different from the lunches of my friends. Like Jaffrey, I thought their lunches were much more interesting than mine. I loved reading about the spices and flavors detailed in this book. I wanted to make one of her very own recipes rather than developing one of my own.I was particularly drawn to the cauliflower dish. My Mama made cauliflower by cooking it in salted water until it was almost tender. Then she drained it and added it to a skillet that had butter in it. She sauteed it until it began to brown and added bread crumbs, allowing them to absorb the flavors of the butter and cauliflower as they browned also. I didn't know until I was much older that our simple fried cauliflower was "Cauliflower Polonaise."  It was my favorite sidedish.  When I saw Jaffrey's cauliflower recipes, I had to try one of them. I made the Grandmother's Cauliflower with Cheese exactly as the recipe was written in the book, except that I had no hot green chilies (not allowed to use jalapeno or serrano chilies) so I increased the amount of cayenne a little and I used powdered cumin as I couldn't find whole cumin seeds.
I learned a new technique right at the beginning:  she suggests grating tomatoes to make a puree.  It worked to separate the skin, although the seeds remain.

After cauliflower florets are cooked in a skillet with cumin for a few minutes, the grated tomatoes, ginger, chilies, cayenne, turmeric, coriander and salt are added.  

Fresh cilantro is added and mixture is transferred to a baking dish.

After adding cheese on top, the cauliflower is baked.

While my mother's cauliflower polonaise will always be my favorite, I love trying new flavors and this one was so very different.  I especially loved it reheated the second day when the flavors had mellowed and blended.  When I make it again, I'll prepare it the day before and reheat it for a meal.  I am so excited about making more dishes from this book.  Reading it made me feel that I had actually spent some time in the home of this family and making the foods puts me at their table.

Yogurt Cheese Applied

I recently made some yogurt cheese.  I had to answer the question I knew would come:  "What are you going to do with that??"  I decided one answer would be sweet and one savory.

This is my peach (and plum) month so I came up with a peach/plum salad.  I love spices and honey and this late summer weather makes me think about cinnamon.

I peeled and sliced peaches, sliced plums and alternated them with small slices of my yogurt cheese.  The center mound of cheese has been whipped with a little honey and powdered cardamom.  The others are plain.  I drizzled my very favorite honey over it.  Acacia honey has a suggestion of plum blossoms in its flavor that I love.  Then I sprinkled cinnamon liberally  and grated nutmeg lightly over that.  I sprinkled some chopped salted pistachios around the edge.  The peaches were particularly juicy and fresh in this salad.  You don't really need the sweet drier plums, but I think they look pretty.

Now the savory: 

This time I mixed my yogurt cheese with chopped dill and chopped chives.  I added a few drops apple cider vinegar to moisten the mixture and add a little tang.  I added salt to taste.  I spread that on pita bread.  I peeled and sliced a cucumber.  I sprinkled a little salt over the slices and mixed it in with them and then layered them over the bread.  I added freshly-ground black pepper to the top.  A second layer of cucumbers wouldn't have hurt.  I'm making one of these for my lunch at work tomorrow.

Yogurt Cheese

Ok, I am an easily distracted person.  Let's just get that out there right now.  (Those who know me already know that.)  Here I am in the midst of my August peaches and other produce theme, and I just discovered a neat website that concentrates on cheese-making. Forging fromage features all kinds of neat dairy challenges.  I have to take a break today from peaches. I have to make some cheese.  I decided to try the easiest one first:  yogurt cheese.  Yogurt cheese is apparently made the same way as instructions I've found for Greek yogurt, which I love!  So here's the process.  I emptied a large container of plain yogurt into a tea towel.  I used low-fat because that's what I had on hand.

I tied a string around the top of the tea towel to prepare to hang it to drain off the whey.

It looks a bit ghostly casting shadows on my basement wall!  The tea towel is a mite too big for the job.

After the recommended amount of time, I took down the hanging thing and, voila!  I had yogurt cheese!

I had to make this picture extra large so you could see how CREAMY it is.  And I didn't even use creamy yogurt!  I will next time.  It was easy, it tastes good and I am excited about making it with whole milk yogurt and adding herbs to it next time!  Actually I will try some of this with a suggested chive and black pepper addition.  The texture is actually closer to cream cheese than Greek Yogurt because of the length of time I let it hang.  Check out the site--they have some really fun projects.