Introduction

My name is Lara and I'm Shauna's cousin (sorry I forgot to do this earlier)! I have five kids, and love to cook (some might say I'm obsessed.) In regards to the goals I posted earlier, I realize now they sound lofty, and want to emphasize that they're goals. I'm a long way from those goals, but I'm trying to move in that direction, like Shelby said in her post about the chicken she uses.

Also, on vegetarianism, I do love meat, but I try to prepare it no more than twice a week. We love vegetarian meals, and my sixteen year old is a vegetarian, and my husband and I have been vegetarians for different periods of time. Has anyone read Mark Bittman's book Food Matters? He has a rule that he's vegan until dinner. He advocates cutting way down on meat for health and environmental reasons.

Creamy Curried Cauliflower Soup

Here is a recipe I've been experimenting with. My ten year old loves cream of broccoli and my husband loves cauliflower, so I decided to combine. It's not incredibly fast because of the vegetable chopping, but it took me only about 20 minutes to get it simmering on a day when the kids weren't too crazy and interrupting.

I love soups, too, Shelby, and love to experiment with them. This soup works well without as many spices, too, though it's a still a very subtle curry flavor. My whole family loves this soup, even the three year old.

Creamy Curried Cauliflower Soup

Ingredients:

One large onion
Two stalks celery
Two medium carrots
One large potato peeled and diced
Handful of Italian Parsley
2 T. extra virgin olive oil
1 T. smoked paprika
1 T. chilli powder
1 t. garam masala or your favorite curry
1 fresh or dried bay leaf
1 t. salt

1/2 c white wine (optional--I only use it if I have some on hand, which is rare--Trader Joe's has good cheap bottles)
2 c water
One large head cauliflower
2 c bechamel sauce (aka white sauce)*
1 c. cream, half and half or milk

Directions:

In heavy bottomed pot, sautee diced vegetables, garlic and chopped parsley in the olive oil gently over medium heat until soft and onion is transparent. Turn heat up to medium high and throw in ground spices--give the vegetables a few turns until the spices look like they've cooked a little, but before the vegatables brown too much. Add water and cauliflower. simmer until cauliflower is just tender. Add wine and simmer for several more minutes, then incorporate a cup of liquid from the soup into the bechamel. Transfer bechamel to big soup pot. Remove bay leaf. Finish with cream, and adjust seasoning. Don't let soup boil after the addition of the cream. This soup may be pureed or served as is.

*Bechamel (I use this as a base for everything, especially things you would use a can of creamed soup in.)

1/4 c. butter
1/4 c. flour
1 t. salt
2 c. milk
a light grating of nutmeg, if you like that flavor.

Melt butter over medium to medium high heat. Whisk in flour, and keep whisking until the color turns golden brown. Whisk in milk. Leave over heat until the sauce bubbles, then turn down to low and cover for ten minutes.

Veggie Stroganoff

Here is another example of creativity bread of necessity. This meal was thrown together from the few ingredients I had on hand.

Ingredients

4 veggie burgers, thawed
1/4 onion, chopped
some olive oil
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 can water
oregano
bay leaf
1/4 C red wine
salt and pepper
cooked rice

Directions

heat oil on medium-high heat, add veggie burgers, break up with wooden spoon. Add chopped onion, and brown. Add soup and water, mix together. Sprinkle with oregano and add a bay leaf and wine (if desired). Reduce heat and let simmer for a while. Add salt and pepper to taste, remove bay leaf, and serve over rice (or noodles).

This dish received high marks from all of us. My three-year-old gobbled it up readily.

Creamy Asparagus Soup

I of course realized after I finished the last post that one of the main tenants of the blog was going mostly meat free, so I figured I'd better pull out another yummy soup recipe that's actually vegetarian...and really good!!

Also, this is a GREAT baby food. My son Sol loves this (minus the nut part). I got this here at Self.com.

Creamy Asparagus Soup

Serve with a whole-grain roll and a piece of fresh fruit to turn this light starter into a filling meal.

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 1 pound asparagus, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 1/2 teaspoons butter
• 1 small onion, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 leek, trimmed of all but 1 inch of dark-green top, sliced
• 1 celery stalk, sliced
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 3/4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• White pepper
• Pinch of nutmeg (optional)
• 1 tablespoon pine nuts

Preparation

1. Bring a medium pot of water to a boil; add asparagus (make sure water covers asparagus). Cook 5 minutes. Drain, reserving 1 cup asparagus water. Remove 16 asparagus tips; cut in half lengthwise; set aside. Heat butter in a medium saucepan over low heat until melted. Cook onion, leek and celery, covered, stirring occasionally, until soft but not brown, 10 to 16 minutes. Add salt. Add broth; bring to a simmer. Cook, partially covered, 8 minutes. Puree broth mixture, asparagus (not tips) and reserved asparagus water in a blender, in 2 batches. (Remove center part of blender lid to prevent hot liquid from bubbling over. Instead, hold a folded dish towel over hole in cap.)

1. Return pureed soup to pot; heat until it just reaches a simmer. Season with pepper and, if desired, nutmeg. Cover; remove from heat. In a small pan, toast pine nuts over medium-low heat, shaking pan occasionally, until nuts are fragrant and browned in some spots, about 6 minutes. Season nuts with salt. Divide soup among 4 bowls; top each with 8 asparagus-tip halves and toasted pine nuts.

The Skinny

93 calories per serving, 4.2 g fat (1.4 g saturated), 10.3 g carbs, 3 g fiber, 6.5 g protein

Chicken Broth and Yummy Soup

Shauna thanks for the invite! My name is Shelby and my husband was friends with Shauna and Darryl back in the day during high school. Good thing, because I've gotten to know Shauna! I'm a working mom right now, so while cooking and eating is important to me, so is the time it takes to prepare. So while I'm trying to make good wholesome meals, I'm also trying to figure out ways to do it that fit our schedule.

So in following with previous post, I have become somewhat of a connoisseur of making my own soup. I come from a family of soup lovers, and how easy is it to pop a can of soup into a bowl and into the microwave?? Well, that was fine and dandy until I found out really how easy it is to make that soup...from scratch. I feel like it's so much better too because, like the Fam (sorry, I don't know your name!) pointed out, it's nice to actually be able to pronounce the ingredients in your food. Here's one of our bi-weekly/monthly favorites at our house. This is a good one because it makes several meals for your family.

First, we buy a whole chicken. If you're going organic, I'm sure you can find something at a Trader Joe's or local farm. We haven't gone that far yet, but we're headed in that direction. I just pick one up from the local supermarket...okay let me correct that-Johnny picks one up, because he's the grocery shopper in our family. Anyway, you prepare it by cutting off the plastic wrap, taking out the yummy insides (don't worry they mostly come in a bag these days-you probably won't even see anything), and rinsing out the whole chicken in the sink until the water runs out clear. Then I put the chicken on a cutting board and season it. Usually it's nothing more than just salt, paprika, or poultry seasoning. It's good to coat the outside skin as well as between the skin and the meat.

Then I pop it into a crockpot in the morning and set it on low. That's it! By the time I get home at night, it's ready to serve. Try having it with some stuffing or mashed potatoes with green beans or steamed carrots and broccoli. Now here's the trick. Once you've had your yummy dinner, cut away all the chicken from the bones. We like to separate the dark and white meat, but you can do it how you like. Then you can use it in other recipes, casseroles, or freeze it.

Now take the rest of the carcass-skin, bones, and all and put it back in the crockpot. Fill the crockpot with water to as full as you would like. The water doesn't really burn off, so make sure you've got enough water. Then we may add some extra seasoning, but mostly we just let the crockpot simmer for overnight or longer on low. (When we're extra busy I think we've let the broth go for a day or 2...not that I'm recommending that!) When you're ready, strain off the chicken remnants. I start with a regular strainer and use a very fine strainer at the end. Put the broth into a pot and bring to a boil. I usually make my soup with white rice and wild rice, so I'll bring the broth to a boil, add the rice and let it simmer for 30 minutes or until the rice is cooked (read the directions on your rice). In the mean time, go ahead and cut some celery and carrots. Add in the cut up chicken last and you've got yourself some yummy soup. One caveat is that you really have to add salt to this baby. But I don't feel too bad about it since you really can see how much you are adding, and I can almost certainly guarantee it's less than what you get in a canned soup.

Shelby's Easy Chicken Soup

Broth from whole chicken
a few carrots peeled and chopped
2-3 stalks celery
white and wild rice
some fresh parsley chopped
salt to taste

1. Boil broth.
2. Add rice, cover and simmer ~30 minutes or until rice is cooked.
3. Add celery and carrots~10-15 minutes before soup is done.
4. Add chicken, cook until chicken is heated.
5. Add parsley and salt to taste.

Sorry about the measurements, but I really eyeball this and it just depends on how much chicken broth you make. Oh, and if you don't want to make so much soup, you can always freeze the broth for other recipes. Then it's nice to know what's actually in that chicken broth!

yay!

Thanks for the invitation, Shauna!!!

My food goal for this year, besides eating way less, is to prepare food that is free from industrially produced ingredients, to source my ingredients from farmers and local sources first, supermarket second.

Most importantly, no foods with ingredients I can't pronounce: no canned soups, processed cheeses, cookies, crackers, cereals, breads, etc. This means whole foods and scratch, baby.

Greek Garden Pizza

I started making pizza-dough, then realized I was out of shredded cheese. Here is what I came up with:

for the dough:

1 t yeast

1 pinch sugar

2/3 C warm water

2 C flour

1/2 t salt

1/4 C olive oil

put in bread mixer, select dough setting, press start. Or just make like regular dough.

Roll onto pizza stone (or a cookie sheet or upside-down jelly-roll pan), spread prepared sauce of choice on top, then cover with:

1 carrot, peeled and chopped

1/4-1/2 onion (depending on how much you like)

1 stalk of broccoli florets, chopped

1/2 red pepper, sliced

some pine nuts

top with feta cheese, then bake at 450 F for 12-15 min.

This dish earned high marks from my husband and I, but my daughter sneered at it. She ate a slice after she shoved all the topping off. She did eat the broccoli after removing it from the pizza, though.

Leftover Mexi-Salad

I failed to take a picture of this creation, but it was fast, easy and pretty healthy, so I'll post the recipe. Last night I was trying to clean out my fridge/use up leftovers, and here's what I came up with:

1 small tortilla (a staple at our house)
a few spoon-fulls of black beans (leftover from previous meal)
a few spoon-fulls of brown rice (also leftover)
generous amount of salad mix (yup, another leftover)
salsa
cheese
dollop of sour cream

Directions:
sprinkle some cheese on the tortilla and microwave for 30 seconds. Layer the beans and rice on the tortilla. Cover with salad mix. Pour on some salsa for dressing and plop a little sour cream (or vegan substitute) on top. Sprinkle more cheese on top, if you're feeling daring.