Beans, rice, and veggies!

I apologize for the hiatus, and I will also apologize in advance for the upcoming hiatus. Just because I'm blogging all alone here, what with nomad wannabe traversing the world and all.


But, I did cook tonight, so I thought I'd share what I made.


It's very rare that I'll cook a vegetarian meal (I even eat my pasta with meat sauce). I have nothing against veggies, it's just...I like meat! Oddly enough, in the plethora of food blogs I read daily, I have a few vegetarian and vegan sites thrown in. I saw this recipe for a "colorful black bean casserole" on the vegan blog "i eat trees." My friend gave me a zucchini on Wednesday (that she grew in her own garden!), and I knew this would be the perfect opportunity to use it.


I altered the recipe enough that I'll just post my version (though I'm sure the original is delicious!):


3 cups prepared white rice
2 cups cooked black beans
1 zucchini, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 large carrots, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
a sprinkling of the mozzarella I had leftover in the freezer
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Salt, cumin, and black pepper


As her directions say, mix the spices and lemon juice with the rice and beans. Sautee the zucchini, onion, carrots, and garlic until tender. Mix everything else together, throw some cheese on top, and bake at 375 for 25 minutes! Enjoy!

Dried fruity nutty bars.

If you've ever met me, you know I am Cheapy McCheaperson. I love saving money. That's not to say I don't love spending it, too--just I like spending it on long lasting things, like clothes...shoes...beauty products...instead of going out to dinner all willy nilly or buying ice cream from fancy stores instead of Safeway. So, when I discovered Larabars and their overwhelming, wait for it, six ingredients, I thought to myself, I can make that too! So I did. It took me an entire week to track down dates, since Safeway and Trader Joe's didn't carry them. But finally, today, I found them at Whole Foods.  And off to the food processor I went.

(Pardon my photos, there is no natural light in my house at 8:30pm...obviously.)

Ingredients (very scientifically measured out):

14 dates

1/8 cup raisins

3 dried apple slices

8 almonds

A sprinkling of cinnamon

(The actual bars contain walnuts as well, but I'm okay without them.)

Combine in food processor and blend.

Using plastic wrap, smoosh together (again, scientific I am) into something resembling a bar shape. Eat.

As unappetizing as they look, they taste exactly like the real thing! I'm not strong enough to compress the bars the way the factory does with all their robots and such, but whatever, I'll eat it with a spoon if I have to.

Next on the agenda: Catch up on Real Housewives.  I can't wait to find out if Caroline bought some bad ham for the kids to play the ham game with.

I didn't actually make a food item

Hello,
So I didn't actually make anything that involves food or edible items, but, I did make another blog. YES! I made my I'm traveling to Europe blog and so I thought I would take the time to tell you about it. Or really, just link it here and tell you that not only will I be chronicling my adventures in Eastern Europe, but I will be eating a lot of Soviet style dishes which you might be interested to find out about. As a consolation, here is a picture of a Passover dinner I once made. Look at that traditional plate, mama would be proud!
Also, shameless, but please read both my blogs. I'm sure my roommates will be on top of things and update about their culinary marvels.
Love and goodbye for the next 2 months.
Nomad Wannabe

Warning: these are not your mom's regular chocolate chip cookies

So after being home from school for a week, I finally had a free day. What do I do on a free day you might ask? Bake! I know that my roommates have been waiting for me to make my first blog entry, so I decided that today would be the day.

As promised, I finally made these Nutella chocolate chip cookies. Of course my first blog entry had to include this chocolate-hazelnut goodness. I swear I eat so much of this stuff I would bleed out Nutella if I could.

My roommate sent me the link to this recipe about a month ago and since then I couldn’t stop thinking about these cookies. It was just a matter of time of when I was going to make them.

The preparation wasn’t difficult at all, just your average chocolate chip cookie recipe…or so I thought. When it came down to measuring and mixing in the Nutella, I really had to put some effort in it. (I was too lazy to get the mixer out). And measuring? What measuring? If I had it my way, I’d dump the whole jar in the bowl. I had to scoop the Nutella out of the jar to measure it out. In all honesty, it wasn’t a pretty site. There was chocolate spread everywhere. On the counter, on body parts, you get the idea. My least favorite part was waiting for the dough to chill. I’m a very impatient person and waiting around for dough is not fun.

The end product is all that mattered. The cookie looks and tastes absolutely delicious. It came out just as the recipe promised, slightly crispy on its edges, but moist and chocolately in the middle. I only wish my roommates (especially the other one who doesn’t eat gluten products) were here to enjoy them with me.

Happy eating!

I do love a good homemade buttercream.

As all two of our readers know, I gave up gluten for Passover (just run with me here) and have done my best to continue since then.  I used to bake something about once per week, but now that I've given up conventional flour, baking is hard. We had an unsuccessful attempt at making homemade pasta--mostly because the gluten free flour I bought tasted positively terrible. I still had a couple cups left, so last night (Friday, yeah, I know) I tried out a recipe for sugar cookie bars from my current favorite food blog.

The flour, I am happy to say, was not as bad in the cookies as it was in the pasta. I took my chances by not adding xanthan gum (since...I don't have any), but everything turned out well. The generous helping of buttercream on top covers up any lingering weird flavors from the flour.

They're not beautiful, but they're the tastiest* gluten free cookie bars I've ever made!

*and only

:)

Non-Sugary Items

Now that I am free of educational responsibility, it seems that my life is busier. How that works I cannot tell you, but I have no good excuses for my lack of food words. However, I think this recipe will make up for my absence, I'm almost positive actually. For some reason, even though no reason is really needed, I think that eggplant, mushrooms, onions, spinach, goat cheese, mozzarella, tomato paste, and orzo all go extremely well together, and if you don't think so, well, no one is forcing you to eat this. Everytime I have those ingredients lying around I make the same thing and I've slowly added more spices and tweaked the recipe as it tasted better and better. You might be doubtful, but try it once and you'll try it again. It's like pringles, but for dinner.
Also, I was snacking on some strawberries while making it, just because I could.


Anywho, here is what you need to know:
Ingredients:
1/4 cup orzo
2 tbsp tomato paste
3/4 cup chicken broth
1 cup spinach, fresh
1/2 medium eggplant, cubed
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 medium onion, diced
7-8 small button mushrooms, chopped
2 tbsp goat cheese
1 tbsp mozzarella
paprika, salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder to taste



Instructions:
1) In a skillet heat up some olive oil or canola oil (I like canola because my mama uses it). On low heat, saute onions and garlic, making sure onions are translucent and that the garlic doesn't burn.
2) Add the mushrooms and the eggplant to the skillet and on low-medium heat let cook until done (eggplant should be really soft and mushrooms should not be rubbery). Do not season until the vegetables are cooked (this I learned from the food network, more specifically dearest paula dean and all her butter-full dishes, yum!)
3) While the vegetables are cooking down, boil the chicken broth and add the orzo, let cook for 8-10 minutes until al dente and then drain. Put back into the pot and add the tomato paste. Put back on the stove on the lowest heat possible to keep it warm and to let some of the tomato paste rawness cook out. Add the spinach to the pot and put a lid on it. This will let the spinach passively cook with the steam from the orzo).



4) Season the vegetables with paprika, salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder to taste. Don't add too much salt because the goat cheese is pretty salty, ooooo how I love sodium.
5) Ok, now vegetables and orzo are both done, success! Let's combine them. Add the orzo/spinach mixture to the skillet with the vegetables and add the goat cheese and mozzarella.



6) Stir together and there you go. It's time to eat. YES!



I highly enjoy this meal and I hope you do too. If you're reading this, congrats! That means that I appreciate you. So thanks! And I know that we're supposed to start a bakery, but, again, I do like sodium full things. Maybe I can be the other half of paula dean. We can be butter and sodium, delicious.

what else do they add smell to?

Just stopping by to post a picture of the delightful breakfast I had...last Monday I believe? I am in love with fresh fruit, but I eat it so quickly that I never have any left to enjoy for the rest of the week! We're taking our weekly food shopping trip tomorrow, so rest assured, I will have fruit with every meal until it's gone (which will probably be Wednesday evening).

Have a lovely Monday night!