Make mole

http://dandelionmama.com/2014/12/16/recipe-easy-weeknight-chicken-mole/

Delicious. But too sweet on black bean-yam enchiladas.  While I'm vegetarian, I think I'll stick with straight enchilada sauce.

Chili-Lime Pistachios

The Curry Guy's recipe for chili-lime pistachios

I didn't have garlic powder in the house and made them without.
The chili powder I bought at grocery store not tasty on its own like the chili powder I buy in bulk from fancy store.

Probably since I didn't really follow they recipe, they were very good but not fantastic.
My husband loved them.  I'll probably try again.

And, I'm comparing them to Pom Wonderful "sweet chili pistachios" which my grocery store stopped carrying.  Maybe I'm missing some sugar?

Apple Breakfast Cake

Apple Breakfast Cake from The Fresh Loaf

Oh my gosh, best ever.  Worth weighing the ingredients for.  Go there for very accurate recipe, more specificity on ingredients, ready to scale for family reunion.

Doubled the basic recipe, left apples unpeeled, cooked in a 9" springform pan.
I left out the walnuts (3 oz) and raisins (5 oz), since someone had just got braces.

My Doubled recipe amounts:
Eggs 6 oz
Sugar 5 oz, or generous 1/2 cup
Butter, melted 5 oz
Apples cored, sliced, unpeeled 2 lbs
Vanilla 1 tsp
Flour 8.7 oz, or about 1 3/4 cup
Baking Powder 2 tsp
Salt 1/2 tsp

335F for one hour.

White bean Kielbasa soup

Where other people have meatless Mondays, I'm most likely to serve a meat dish on Mondays when the committed vegetarians are out at activities.

I sautéed onion, carrot, and celery, then added the leftover flageolet white beans, kielbasa, tomato, and kale, and a cup of broth to thin it, for a simple rainy day skillet stew.   We added Tabasco at the table.

Cheesy broccoli potato soup

I made a double batch of Cheesy Broccoli Potato Soup, which seemed just right on a rainy night after a heavy diner cheeseburger lunch.  In the interest of my own nutritional goals, I put in less than half the cheese called for, and served lots of shredded cheese for individuals to add.

I offered hot wheat rolls and corn chips as sides.  They went untouched, so perhaps everyone really was still full from lunch.  But I must do something in order to send them off to bed--dinner was already held off until 7pm.

The littlest one said she wasn't hungry and only ate one bite.
The middle one still has a sore mouth from new braces, bravely ate one bowl and then his leftover cheeseburger chopped to tiny bits in the food processor.
I liked it.  Other adults liked it.

Nevertheless, nine cups of leftover soup is kind of discouraging.  They all are going to have to find the love for this stuff over the next couple days.  Perhaps parmesan croutons on the leftovers when they're presented.

South of France Beans

Flageolet beans seasoned with garlic, crushed red pepper, and herbes de provence.
mix in sauteed kale and tomato.

Accidently Overly Rich Mac N Cheese

Okay, it's not my first homemade mac 'n cheese.  Usually I make it with melted sliced american cheese.  This is my first attempt at this recipe: Classic Mac and Cheese from Homeroom in Oakland, CA.

It calls for four cups of whole milk, a stick of butter, 1/2 cup flour, 3 cups shred sharp cheddar, and 3 oz of shredded parmesan.

I don't have whole milk in the house, so I had about 1/2 cup cream and 3/4 cup half and half, and the rest skim milk.

Later I looked it up and 4 cups of whole milk would have been 32 grams of milkfat.
A tablespoon of heavy cream has 50 grams of milkfat.  So, a mere tablespoon would have MORE than enough to turn my skim milk into whole milk.

I had no idea heavy cream is that much richer than whole milk.  Whoops.

Vegan cooking: Naturally Ella

Today I discovered Naturally Ella, a vegan cooking site with beautifully photographed dishes, indexed by season and featured vegetable ingredient.

The computer I keep in the kitchen is an older Mac, and my significant other keeps shaking his head at the flour and cooking oils that are depositing themselves on it.  The interface for choosing the vegetable in the seasonal recipes doesn't work for me here.  Perhaps it's a javascript issue.

I'll probably try to work my way around that, because Erin Alderson, aka Naturally Ella, has gathered the kinds of recipes I want to make.  We may not be a vegan family, but we love good vegan cooking.

Tonight I tried the Spicy Lentil Vegan Sloppy Joe and I'll be making it again, though next time I think I"ll cook the lentils and sauce separately and combine them at the end.  I did add a tablespoon of brown sugar to a doubled recipe, (don't shudder) but that was because the old balsamic vinegar from the back of the cupboard is intensely strong, and needed more than the called-for molasses to balance it.

It's an amazing and delicious sloppy joe sauce, which is what I need to overcome my teenagers' love of ConAgra Manwich.  Not being vegan, we eat it with good sliced Vermont sliced cheese.

Spaghetti Squash Fritters

Cooking Light's spaghetti squash fritters.   I used kale instead of spinach.  I wondered about throwing in chopped onion. I had baked the spaghetti squash earlier to serve with marinara, but when it came time to put together dinner I.just.couldn't.do.it. These are more like squash latkes than fritters, but the joy of baked spaghetti squash is that it is effectively already shredded.

Quick Catfish in Cornmeal

Quick Catfish in Cornmeal

Once again, picking fish at Hannaford's and looking up a recipe on my phone while the fish is wrapped.  This was good and not too involved.

Roast Vegetables Enchiladas

Jack cheese, tofu, flour tortillas, canned green enchilada sauce.
Roasted zucchini,  red bell pepper, frozen corn kernels, mushrooms, red onion.

Nicole wherever you are, these are the granddaughters of the chicken enchiladas you taught me to make in 1995.

Watermelon
Spinach-craisen-almond salad. [edited to add 10/2014: 1. I make the enchilada sauce these days. 2. I've dropped the tofu and use whatever vegetables are on hand, and that usually includes my favorite kale. Yum Kale with Enchilada Sauce. 3. If I roll the enchiladas, everyone's happy. If I layer a enchilada casserole, which is easier and faster, I get complaints from children that they're facing a mexican lasagna. I make vegetable/pasta lasagna 3 or 4 times a month, so more lasagna is excessive--so they tell me.]

Stuffed Potatoes with Kale Salad

Twice-baked potato (with sour cream, butter, salt, pepper)
optional ham garnish
optional cheese garnish
Kale Salad


Not sure I would make this again--I did it because I bought a bag of organic yellow potatoes thinking it was a bag of yellow organic onions.

Lunch Pasta

The zucchini and mushroom needed a purpose, so I turned them into lunch with other goodies I had in the fridge.

chopped garlic
small red onion
1 zucchini
handful of mushrooms
sun dried tomatoes in oil
firm tofu, one slice diced
pesto
leftover cooked pasta
grated parmesan cheese

saute in pan, in the order you'd expect.  Served 2.

Idea for alternative: with kalamata olives and some oregano.

Grill Experiments--Salmon and Bison

Menu
Grilled Salmon
Grilled Steak
Grilled Corn (Elote)
leftover acorn squash with quinoa stuffing
green salad.

Notes:
Grilled Salmon
Heat grill up to 325 F.
took much longer than 8 minutes.

Next time:
oil the grill.  Less olive oil on Salmon.  It dipped into drum and caught fire.
It was cooked just about right! despite temperature dropping too low in the middle of cooking!
Salmon was generally appreciated.


Bison Steak
heated grill up to 325 F
cooked to 135 F.

next time:
Serve red meat again, half the kids liked it.


Elote--
Took more than half an hour to cook.
Shucked corn
turn on various sides to get them slightly charred
smear on mayo/cheese mix
served paprika/cayenne/chili powder at table for sake of anti-spice child.

Next time:
char a little less, it will be fine, and faster.
make sure cheese is cotija.
divide smear; mix paprika/chili into most smear.

Cod with Potatoes and Saffron

Baked Cod and Potatoes with Spanish Seasoning
Cucumber Salad

Cod was a good deal at Hannahford's, so I bought 1.5 pounds.  I looked at my iPhone while she wrapped it, and found this recipe:
     Baked Cod and Chorizo
"Perfect," I thought, "I bought that amazing Spanish Chorizo weeks ago, and we need to eat it before it goes bad.  And I have a couple potatoes that need to be cooked soon."  I bought some saffron to fill it out.

The seafood lady gave me some salmon as well, to encourage me to come back and buy it another day.

When I got home: problems.

• The chorizo was growing mold.  It had been waiting months, not weeks.
• I couldn't fit all the fish in the iron skillet.

My husband came to the rescue, pulled out his big iron griddle, and basically took over the seasoning and cooking.  I felt bad about this because unlike me, he'd already worked a long day, and dinner was now late for everybody.  Seasoning was the basic garlic-cumin-salt-paprika-cayenne, with some saffron threads.

I had been nervous about the potatoes really cooking in the skillet, so I had baked them an hour before.  I sliced the two baked potatoes onto the griddle with the fish so they would be seasoned too.

For a side dish, I sliced cucumber and celery in the food processor, added some grape tomatoes and sliced green onions, and dressed it with salt and little olive oil.  I was going for something halfway between Israeli Salad and Spanish salad.

The potatoes were a hit.
The fish was mostly a hit.  The saffron didn't show up though; maybe it was lost when we switched pans.
The salad was small, and entirely eaten.

Acorn Squash with Quinoa Stuffing

Acorn Squash with Quinoa Stuffing
Green Salad
Multigrain Rolls

Cut the acorn squash in half and bake in oven at 350.
Make quinoa in rice cooker.  Be sure and rinse it much first.

mix into quinoa:
Kale
tiny cubes of tofu
minced celery (food processor)
minced mushroom (food processor)
chopped walnuts. (food processor)
chopped apple (food processor)

Tasty, children were only mildly appreciative but I don't care.  We ate 75%.
The rolls were not vegan, actually.