Broccoli Parmesan Pasta

It was definitely a pasta night.  It was pretty much the perfect day, and I couldn’t wait to make the perfect dinner to follow it up.  We had some beautiful organic broccoli, and colored veggie spiral pasta.  No sauce to speak of, but that’s no trouble at all...

I had gotten on a big afternoon song kick, remembering and playing some really old tunes, and by the time Will got home I was excited and just kept on playing, even managing a few he’d never heard before.  After almost two years with someone with whom your first dates consisted almost entirely of song swapping, that’s an impressive feat!  Dinner was cooked largely between songs with a guitar strung over my shoulder.  Fun :)

I put the pasta water on to boil, and sauteed half an onion in the large pan.  I chopped up a couple cups worth of broccoli and placed it in the colander on top of the pasta water.  (Probably not as clever as I think it is, but I get a small thrill from my resourcefulness ;)  After 7-10 minutes of steaming I transferred the broccoli into the pan with the onions.

I drained the pasta and added butter, garlic, olive oil, soy sauce, nutritional yeast (to help the liquids actually stick to the noodles), and flaxseed (for texture and color), spooning only what I needed to properly fill out the broccoli and onions.  (Sometimes I get overzealous and add too many noodles to not enough “good stuff,” which is always a bit of a shame.)

I like to cook noodles in a pan for a few minutes with their toppings, so they can soak up  more of the flavor, and if I’m patient enough they’ll get a bit of a flavor crust around the edges....me = total pasta junkie.

A little parmesan cheese and a side salad (I’ve grown to accept the “lazy salad” and can get away with organic salad mix and Mama’s Miracle Dressing with no one missing anything) and we had a rather delicious meal!  I commented to Will just how much like my mother I am when I exclaimed excitedly from the kitchen, “Oh this is gonna be goooooood...”   love, love, love my mama :)

Broccoli Parmesan Pasta

Approximate price: $3

Cabbage Wraps with Garlic Carrots

I got the idea for cabbage wraps from a coworker several years ago, and I’m a big fan because A) it doesn’t involve something bready and B) since the cabbage itself is spherical, the leaves naturally roll up nice and small on the edges, leaving the middle to bulge up with as much delicious stuff as you like!

I’ve made them raw for lunchtimes, with more fresh veggies and dressing, as well as steamed them up for dinner with something a little heartier inside.  The only tricky part is getting the leaves separated from the head without tearing them to bits.  The outermost layers tend to be the easiest, but I’ve found that severing them at the base and pulling carefully from there works pretty good.  And even if they rip you can make smaller wraps ;)

We had some leftover grits from Will’s mama, cooked with onion and bits of bacon.  I added a bit of garlic and butter, as refrigerating and reheating have a tendency to dry things out.

Easy, easy dinner!  I steamed the cabbage leaves for about 7 minutes.  There must be a sweet spot in there, where the leaves are no longer crunchy, but they still hold together and the hefty “spine” isn’t too tough.  I spooned the grits into the cabbage and rolled ‘em on up, garnishing with a few spoonfuls of pecan chipotle pesto I had saved from my breakfast bagel that morning.  (Our waitress was more than happy to bring me a tiny to go sauce container :)

The wraps were served with farm fresh carrots cooked up with olive oil, garlic and nutritional yeast.

cabbage wraps with garlic carrots

approximate price: $5

Yam and Broccoli Stir Fry Over Brown Rice

this started out as yams and a separate stir fry, but as often happens they were converged in a moment of decision.

i started out chopping up the two medium sized yams we had into 1/2 inch or so cubes and putting them into boiling water.  next, i put 1 cup of rice in a saucepan with 2 cups of water to bring to a boil (once boiling turn down to simmer with the lid on).  then, i proceeded on as i always seem to do, with a chopped yellow onion in a lightly buttered frying pan.  

our veggies for the night were red peppers and broccoli, so i chopped and put the peppers in soon after the onion.  to soften the broccoli up before putting it in the pan i used a colander atop the boiling yams to steam them for five minutes or so.  once the broccoli was added to the stir fry i minced two cloves of garlic to toss in as well (if too much of the surface area of the pan is bare the garlic can burn easily).

when the rice was soft enough i mixed in a few spoonfuls of mama’s miracle dressing, some sunflower seeds and some ground flaxseed.

i scooped the rice onto plates with a heap of stir fry drizzled with my pesto-less chard pesto (leftover from red pepper and chard pesto-less pasta with grilled eggplant) and sprinkled with flaxseed.

served with a side of kale chips.

yam and broccoli stir fry over brown rice 

approximate price: $6

***in general, i’m pretty sure that the sum of orange and green things mixed together become suddenly less appetizing than their parts.  the last dinner i really messed up (see HERE :)  involved orange and green and i had an “uh oh” moment thinking i had done it again.  it tasted plenty good, it just didn’t look so pretty....the flaxseed evened it out a bit though.

Backyard Deviled Eggs

ok, so i really just wanted to show off a picture of deviled eggs made by my happy babies in the backyard!  how cool is that!  :)

deviled eggs are super easy.  i put four eggs covered by water in a sauce pan and boiled them for ten minutes, switching them over to a bowl of cold water to cool down.

i cracked the shells against the cutting board in a few places around the wide end, as i find it’s easier to peel from the little pocket of air that ends up down there.

i rinsed them off and sliced them in half (carefully, so as not to tear them), and got out the mayo, mustard and cilantro.  i took the yolks out and put them into a bowl, mixing with a spoonful of mayo, mustard and a bit of mama’s miracle dressing (which you will now see in probably everything i do from here on out! :) 

you can season it however you like, which is the beauty of everything i do here at shit in a pot!  :)  then just scoop it back out into the perfect little half circles just waiting to be filled back in.  paprika is the traditional topping for them, but i thought cilantro would do just fine....

backyard deviled eggs

approximate price: $2

veggie black bean tacos and salad

we played some music down at a farmer’s market last weekend and traded our loot straight for veggies, and locally made pasta and rosemary cheese curds.....oh heavens!  sooooo fun to come home from that and decide what to make for dinner :)

i’ve been trying to eat less gluten and dairy lately....(not doing very well on either count!) so i got corn tortillas instead of flour, and fancy cheese instead of the Big Block Standby.  i’d been craving peppers but hadn’t wanted to get them at the grocery store because the red ones are almost $4 apiece and i knew i could get them straight from the farm for much less, i just had to wait a bit.  (contrary to popular practice it really is good to have to wait for some things before you have them!  ;)  and our local grocery store chain now has organic cilantro AND green onions!  very good news :)

i wasn’t feeling up to making a pasta dish worthy of our Spinach, Basil and Garlic Fettucini yet, so i opted for soft tacos.  first thing to do was put on half a fresh yellow onion and two small red peppers ($1 each! :) to saute for a bit (with a touch of organic pasture butter).  

i then opened a can of black beans and put them on low heat in a small sauce pan.  as they heated up i added a bit of salt, ground flax seed, and nutritional yeast to give them a more interesting flavor (“interesting” is all i go for sometimes!  it usually works! ;)

when the onions and pepper started getting soft and a bit browned i added a clove of minced garlic, and used the time to put some salad mix in a bowl and chop up some preparatory cilantro and green onion.  our standby salad these days is mix/lettuce + cherry tomatoes from the garden, sunflower seeds, ground flax and cilantro/green onion.  um, YUM.  

when toppings were ready i put the corn tortillas in a pan with some grated smoked gouda on low heat ‘til the cheese started to melt.  i put the tortillas on a plate with a dose of black beans, peppers and onions, cilantro and flax, and a drizzling of  Mama's Miracle Dressing, along with a small mountain of salad and we had a delicious dinner!  will got to guess what the flavors were...one of my favorite parts of this game ;)

veggie black bean tacos and salad

approximate price: $5 

mama's miracle dressing

when i was growing up i was not the biggest salad fan.  not that i disliked vegetables in general, but salad dressings were never very good and salad, for the most part, felt pretty darn boring.  i always ate it dry, most often as finger food.  (i was as fine with that as a kid could be ;)

and THEN....my mom made a dressing from three ingredients, and three ingredients only.  

olive oil

soy sauce (or tamari)

garlic

that was it.  about a half/half liquid ratio, and as much garlic as you can or can’t stand.  (it stays separated so it needs to be mixed with a spoon and scooped out to get some of everything.  we keep a stocked tupperware container on hand.)  and suddenly i was eating as much salad as was humanly possible.  oh my god.  sometimes we crave brownies.  sometimes we crave soy sauce and garlic.  i have no trouble attempting to satiate the latter.  

i made the dressing for Will recently and we both have turned into raging salad monsters.  plus i have realized that the dressing is good to put on all sorts of other things, like, well, pretty much any other savory thing i may be eating at the time.

fried/scrambled eggs?  YES.

pasta of any kind?        YES.

stir fry of any kind?       YES.

grain dish of any kind? YES.

try it!  grow list, grow!  :)

red pepper and chard pesto-less pasta with grilled eggplant

so pasta is just one of those things that you don’t realize is so much better it’s a small locally made batch....i mean, i love pasta already.  it’s one of my favorite things, but local pasta?  it’s above and beyond in ways that i couldn’t imagine before i had it.

we got spinach, basil & garlic fettucini from the farmers’ market and i couldn’t wait to come up with something delicious for dinner!  our poor garden finally surrendered to the cold nighttime temperatures, and after the first morning of waking up to sad, dark droop i harvested what i could from the tomatoes (hoping that with some tricks suggested by friends will ripen indoors :) and chard, which was already looking a little sad from absolute obliteration by caterpillar.  unfortunately the basil turned brown overnight so i didn’t have any for pesto, but i still had my eye on the chard for, well, pesto-less pesto :)

we also had some local red peppers and yellow onions, which i put on to saute with a li’l butter, and an eggplant (also loot from the farmers’ market), which i sliced lengthwise into pieces about a 1/2 inch thick.  i also put them in a lightly buttered frying pan on low, flipping them within five minutes or so to get some oil on the other side as well.  (it tends to soak up quickly.)

i prepped my chard, washing and removing the thickest part of the stems, and cutting it just once or twice to make it a bit easier to fit in the pot of boiling water.  i left them cooking for a bit longer than i would to serve them as greens, in order to make them more agreeable to a blender.  i removed the greens from the water with tongs, letting them carry some of the liquid with them, and put them in the blender, adding a quarter or so cup of olive oil, three cloves of chopped garlic and a half teaspoon-ish of salt, blending until smooth.  

the pasta instructions were to cook for six minutes, so they were saved until the end.  i used the chard water to cook them (why not?) and prepped a handful of cilantro.  (one might argue that cilantro doesn’t necessarily go with basil, but it wasn’t fresh basil....and i really like cilantro!)  

i drained the noodles in a colander and put them back in the pot with the lovely green sauce from the blender.  i served it onto the plate, with a big scoop of red peppers and onions, topped with cilantro and accompanied by tender slices of eggplant drizzled with Mama’s Miracle Dressing and sprinkled with flaxseed.  

red pepper and chard pesto-less pasta with grilled eggplant 

it was one of those dinners we didn’t say much over, other than how good it was!  (and how much it looked like christmas :)

approximate price: (i won’t lie, the pasta was pricey!) $12