alfredo tofu and collard pizza

i make a lot of pizza....at least once a week.  i haven’t learned to make the crust from scratch yet (that’s like a real recipe!  yikes!) but it’s the most fun way for me to throw odds and ends together to make something that’s pretty darn hard to mess up.

i had suggested pizza, because we had an open package with one crust left that i knew wouldn’t last long, but even i was verbally skeptical that we had anything to put on it.  shame on me!  i know better......

i had gotten a jar of alfredo sauce at the store recently, and then remembered i had also gotten some tofu...what else, what else, i thought.....sunflower seeds....chard and collards from the garden.....carrots, no.....cabbage, no.....leftover okra and baked eggplant.....garlic.....green onions.....cheese.....

well that was more than enough to convince me!  confidence regained ;)  i sauteed a yellow onion with most of a package of tofu (saving just enough to be able to do a little something with it if i need to this week) and a little butter and bragg’s.  while that was cooking i went out and said hi to the chickens while i collected a few leaves of collards (making sure to thoroughly de-aphid them :).

i chopped up the baked slice of eggplant (not much but why not?) and added it into the mix with the leftover okra pepper stir fry from last night, making sure to remember a few cloves of minced garlic.  all that went on the alfredo dressed pizza crust and into the oven.

it was really good!  it had almost a sweet aroma to it, maybe from the butter and tofu combo?  i sprinkled a little ground flaxseed and cracked salt on top, and ready....set......eat!  :)

approximate price: $5

cucumber pomegranate salad

our friends are growing pomegranates, and while they were chicken sitting for us left one for us in the refrigerator.  i haven’t had one since i was a kid, and will had never seen one.  at least i was able to identify it and have some idea about what to do with it (not much, mind you :)

have i mentioned how much i love salads??  the possibilities are so limitless it’s crazy.  you really don’t need much to make a side dish, and sometimes the fewer things that are in it the more interesting it can be.  and now that lettuce is in season in texas (i’m sorry northerners!) we both have been craving it like crazy.

i chopped cucumber and banana peppers, and dug out most of a pomegranate (i saved some seeds to munch on later (i hear that chickens find them tasty, too ;)  i added some roasted sunflower seeds and green onion, along with oil, vinegar and cracked salt.

cucumber pomegranate salad

approximate price: $3

nutmeg squash with pomegranate date quinoa, veggie stir fry and fruit salad

well, it’s tour time again!  usually that means that i don’t do much cooking and rely on archived recipes to cover the time, but my good friend and tour mate daisy o’connor has some awesome friends in san francisco that we got to stay with for the first leg of our trip.  and it JUST so happens that they enjoy having traveling house guests cook dinner for them.....oh boy oh boy!  shit in a pot goes on the road!  :)

i was a little intimidated in a new city and a new kitchen (and daisy made sure my reputation preceded me!) but she and i were a team and so i took a deep breath and plunged in!  (why is it anyway that we shy away from our talents for fear that we might mess up this one time even though we’ve proven time and time again that we’re good at what we do??  life lessons everywhere ;)

our compiled pool of ingredients came to:

plain quinoa and red quinoa

an assortment of veggies (mostly green)

2 spaghetti squashes

an assortment of fruit (persimmons among them!)

my first inclination was towards “stuffing” the squash with the quinoa and veggies, but we didn’t start it soon enough to cook it in halves, so we cut it up into smaller chunks to cook it faster, and put them faced down (skin up) on a coconut-oiled* glass baking pan.

we mixed the quinoas together and cooked them in a rice cooker.  (i do it at home in a pan/pot: 2 cups water per 1 cup quinoa.)  we added a few spoonfuls of coconut oil (one of the luxuries of the evening!), a handful of fresh pomegranate seeds, a handful of dried date pieces and a healthy sprinkling of sea salt.

the broccoli, zucchini, kale, green beans, etc got chopped and went into a frying pan (with some coconut oil....) and were super no-fuss.  all we added was a bit of salt and balsamic vinegar.

with squash i’m learning that the rule for how long to cook it is either A) at least an hour, or two.... or B) ‘til your hosts are really hungry.  it was in at 450 for about 45 minutes when B happened.  we scraped it out of the skins into a bowl adding, yes, two or so spoonfuls of coconut oil, a sprinkling of salt, a drizzling of honey and the surprise grand winner: nutmeg.  we only used a small amount, maybe a teaspoon, with a shrug and a “why not?”  that’s the best :)

daisy made a simple fruit salad with apples and persimmons and pomegranate and we presented our gracious hosts with quite the spread!  a little discombobulated with a few confused moments but everyone enjoyed a wonderful meal :)  we put everything out on the table on its own for people to serve themselves, and i was told the next day that during a phone call one of our buddies was still talking about our squash!  (i definitely call that a success ;)

nutmeg spaghetti squash with pomegranate date quinoa and veggie stir fry

approximate price: pooled resources are harder to calculate, but this was probably around $15 worth of food for 5 people, only using what we already had!  :) 

*coconut oil is pricey, but supposedly is very good for you!  it’s the GOOD kind of fat, and very stable so it has a high heat tolerance and is slow to oxidize (i.e. become rancid).  it has a subtle flavor which can be very tasty in place of other oils (or butter....as this IS shit in a pot! ;)

Kale Chips

kale chip heaven!  :)

i was really determined to get this kale chip thing down after will’s mom made us a batch for a road trip and they lasted about 20 miles!

i had some disappointing runs, though it’s hard to mess up salty greens!  too much oil can keep them from getting crispy, but hey, nobody’s loss :)

i have learned firsthand why kale chips work best, and i believe it’s because of the waviness of the leaves.  other greens can lay too flat on the pan and either burn or get quite stuck.  collards are the very thin and elegant variety, while chard and even beet greens can hold their own.  but kale is best.

i have found that 300 degrees for 20 minutes works out just fine.  finally, consistency!  :)

about three full grown leaves will fit on my pizza pan.  i wash and remove the thick part of the stem (usually at least 3/4 of the length), then chop them into bite-sized pieces.  i put a small amount of oil in a bowl (i use olive oil, a tablespoon or so) and dip one or two fingers in to rub onto the backs of the leaves.  this is far from precise!  just get a little bit on there (there shouldn’t be enough to be drippy at all) and lay them oil side up on the pan.  it’s ok if they overlap a little.

i sprinkle some cracked salt across the pan and pop it into the 300 degree oven, setting the timer for 20 minutes.

if you’re feeling really patient (but ready for an amazing payoff!) you can finely mince some garlic in with the oil, as well as finely grated cheese.  both are delicious!  or try other seasonings and flavor combinations.  as i’m typing this i’m suddenly thinking that some tamari mixed with the oil would be delightful.....

kale chips

approximate price: a bunch of kale, even organic, costs around $2.  you can make a lot of chips out of that!

tuna pizzarella

stuff to use:

leftover tuna salad

mini pizza crusts

sooooooooo like a tuna melt right?

i spread it on the single serve pizza crust and covered it with some fresh mozzarella that also needed to be used, along with a few sliced cherry tomatoes (which probably should have gone under the cheese, but no biggie :)

into the oven for the time the package said and voila!  

tuna pizzarella

this would be a little weirder i think if it was a normal sized pizza crust, but the single serve actually made a lot of sense!  :) 

approximate price: $3

egg and beet hash browns

woah, surprise winner!

will doesn’t like beets so unfortunately we had a bunch from the farm share go bad while i was out of town (i hate admitting to things like that!), so i was determined not to let that happen this week.  my mom’s been telling me that beets are one of the best things you can eat and i do like them, but i’m never excited to cook with them for some reason.  they take a while i suppose, and they kind of have to stay by themselves or else everything they touch turns a bright unappetizing pink.

it was actually on my to-do list to eat the last beet in the fridge (i’m a strange and happy creature :) and my thought to save on cooking time was to grate it into a pan (and decide what to do with it later).  well grating takes forever....so much for the time saving idea, but the task was getting done nonetheless. 

i put in a little butter and bragg’s (liquid amino acids for anyone who doesn’t know this vegan staple!) and after ten or so minutes of intermittent stirring (low heat) i added a couple cloves of minced garlic.  they started to look a little dry so i covered them and also added about a quarter cup of water.

i cracked two eggs into the pan (too lazy to dirty a dish to mix them first....) and mixed them in evenly before flattening everything into an even layer.  i wasn’t sure if the egg-to-beet ratio was high enough it to stick together, but when i came back ten or so minutes later it definitely had.  i separated it down the middle in order to flip both halves and was pleased to find a delicious golden shade to the undersides.

i grated a little sharp cheddar on top and sprinkled cracked salt and green onions from the pot outside (i’m lucky that the chickens don’t like them, now that the back porch is apparently the cool place to hang out!) 

egg and beet hash browns

approximate price: $2

baked butternut squash stuffed with cheese and wild rice

well, i’ve never made stuffed squash before, but i really didn’t think it could be very hard.  that’s my story and i’m sticking to it :)

i admit, i don’t really know how long squash takes to bake in the oven.  i figured too long would be better than not long enough so i gave it around two hours.  butternuts can be tricky to cut because they are so solid, so just be careful!  i cut it in half once lengthwise, so as to have two nice big circles to fill.  i rubbed the fleshy sides with olive oil and put them facedown on a baking pan.  (i used an aluminum one, though i’m sure glass or otherwise would be fine too.)

we had some leftover broth from will’s mom’s delicious bacon collard greens, which we used to supplement cooking water for wild rice (1:2 rice/water ratio).  

i sauteed up a medium yellow onion with a little butter, and when the rice was tender i added in the onion, along with a few cloves of minced garlic, another couple tablespoons of butter* and a sprinkling of cracked salt.

for the sake of having some veggies, i boiled some baby carrots for about 10 minutes (depends on how soft you want them).  after draining them i added enough olive oil to flavor and a clove of minced garlic.

two hours was plenty long enough to make the squash soft and delicious (and our house smell like heaven! :)  i flipped over the halves, filling up the holes with rice and covering them neatly with cheese.  (i used slices of muenster, but i’m certain any kind will do!  it’s hard to go wrong with cheese :)

baked butternut squash stuffed with cheese and wild rice 

approximate price: $6