Apple-Orange-Banana Smoothie

When I grew up, my mom's favorite fruit salad consisted of apples, oranges and bananas. I don't remember her ever dressing the salad, but just cutting up the fruit and tossing the chunks to mix them well. The orange keeps the bananas and apples from turning brown, so it's a salad that is not only healthy, but also looks lovely. After the morning walk with the buddies, I made a smoothie based on my mother's fruit salad combo. It is very tasty and quickly blended.

Apple-Orange-Banana Smoothie

Ingredients:

1 banana

2 apples

2 oranges

8 oz. orange juice (freshly squeezed is particularly nice)

1/2 cup low-fat yogurt

2 Tbsp. freshly ground flax seeds

Preparation:

Wash all fruit well and cut into large chunks. Put all ingredients into a blender and blend on high for about 30 seconds, or until everything is smooth and creamy. The recipe makes about two 16-oz. servings.

Fresh Pumpkin Pie

This fall we joined a CSA (community supported agriculture), a local farm that delivers a bushel box of organically grown produce every other week to a drop-off location nearby. With the last batch of vegetables we also received a so-called "dessert pumpkin." It's a small pumpkin, very cute, about 5 1/2 inches in diameter and weighing approximately three pounds. It has served as a great centerpiece on our kitchen counter, but now it's time to turn it into pumpkin pie.

I have to admit that pumpkin pie has never been my favorite dessert, and I usually pass it up for apple pie on Thanksgiving Day. Also, I've never made pumpkin pie before, not even with the canned variety. So at first I was a little leery. But the good thing about getting produce from a farm and not knowing what's in the box is that you learn to cook with foods you would never think of buying in the supermarket. I honestly have to say that making pumpkin pie from a fresh pumpkin has taken me to new heights in baking. I really like the taste of the pie, too. I guess you could say I had a pumpkin pie conversion experience…

Before being able to use the pumpkin flesh, I had to cook it. I settled on baking it because it is a very simple method.

Baking a Pumpkin

Ingredients:

1 pumpkin, approximately 3 pounds (makes about 2 cups of pumpkin purée)

olive oil (pure olive oil is more stable at higher temperatures, so use that!)

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350˚F. Wash the pumpkin and cut in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds and keep them for roasting later. Brush a cookie sheet or roasting pan with oil and place pumpkin halves on it, cut side down. Cover with foil and bake at 350˚F for about 60-90 minutes or until very soft. Scrape the flesh out of the rind and purée in a food processor or food mill.

The next step involves making the actual pumpkin pie:

Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp. kosher salt

1/4 tsp. ground ginger

1/4 tsp. ground cloves

3 large eggs

2 cups fresh pumpkin purée

1 cup whole milk

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 375˚F. Prepare your favorite crust (home-made or store-bought) and line a pie pan with it. Set aside. Combine sugar and spices, add the eggs and beat until mixture is creamy and light-colored. Add pumpkin purée, then milk, and mix until everything is blended well. Pour this filling into your favorite crust recipe and bake for about 35-45 minutes, until the center of the filling is set, but still quivery when nudged. Let pie cool on a rack. It can be served cold, at room temperature or slightly warm. Serve with whipped cream.

Note: The baking instructions are given for conventional oven baking. I used a convection oven, but it still took my pie 35-45 minutes at 375˚F.

Biscuits and Gravy

When we go to Finland–Finland, Minnesota, that is–we always make sure that we have breakfast at Our Place, the restaurant in this town of 400+ people on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It is the local hang-out where people gather to watch football or baseball and where you get a good breakfast, lunch or dinner without feeling robbed. On Saturdays and Sundays only, the restaurants serves the best biscuits and sausage gravy you can find anywhere according to my husband. With the weather turning colder and our appetites increasing for more substantial fare, I gave making biscuits and gravy a first try today. I received a two-thumbs-up approval rating from my husband with the words that I can make that again. Be warned though: This is not a recipe to make if you're watching your waistline.

Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

Ingredients:

12 oz. Jimmy Dean Sage breakfast sausage

4-6 Tbsp. butter*

4-6 Tbsp. all-purpose flour*

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1/4 tsp. black pepper

4 cups whole milk, warmed

Preparation:

Cook sausage in a large skillet over medium heat, breaking it up into small chunks, until it is no longer pink. Add butter and heat until melted. Add flour, salt and pepper and cook and stir for a few minutes until everything is blended well. Heat milk in the meantime. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly. Bring mixture to a boil, reduce heat and cook for a few minutes until the sauce is thickened. Serve sauce over bicuits. Makes 4-6 servings.

*Tip: If you like your sauce rather thin, use less butter and flour without changing the other measurements. If you like it a little thicker, go for the full 6 tablespoons of butter and flour!

A Potato-Fennel Gratin Fit Enough For Company

The best-tasting potatoes–obviously–can be had in fall when they're harvested and the stores are brimming with a large variety of different kinds and sizes. I made the following recipe for a potato-fennel gratin tonight for guests and it was a hit with everyone. The recipe is almost exactly taken from Ina Garten's The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook.

Potato-Fennel Gratin

Ingredients:

2 fennel bulbs

1 yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced

2 Tbsp. pure olive oil

1 tbsp. unsalted butter

2 pounds potatoes (russet or Yukon Gold)

2 cups heavy cream

2 1/2 cups grated Gruyère cheese (1/2 lb.)

1 tsp. kosher salt

1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350˚F and butter an 9x13-inch casserole dish. Remove the stalks from the fennel and cut the bulbs in half lengthwise. Remove the cores and thinly slice the bulbs crosswise. Sauté the fennel and the onions in the olive oil and butter on medium-low heat until tender.

Peel the potatoes and slice them thinly, about 1/8 inch thick. Mix the sliced potatoes in a large bowl with 2 cups of cream, 2 cups of Gruyère, salt and pepper. Add the sautéed fennel and onion and mix well.

Pour mixture into the prepared casserole dish. Press down to smooth the potatoes. Sprinkle the top with about 1/2 cup of grated Gruyère. Bake uncovered for 1 1/2 hours, until the potatoes are very tender and the top is browned nicely. Allow a few minutes to cool and set before serving.

The recipe makes about 10 servings and can be made days ahead of time and reheated at 350˚F for about 30 minutes. (Let the gratin come to room temperature before reheating. If not, the time for reheating needs to be increased.)

Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Gratin

Oh boy! Here is an indulgence that I made for the dinner table tonight, and with something like this on the menu I say, "who cares about dessert? Let's have seconds instead!"

With plenty of butternut squash and sweet potatoes on hand and tired of making yet another pot of soup, I found a recipe for butternut squash and sweet potato casserole on the blog Pinch My Salt that I liked because of its simplicity, wonderful photography and great directions. The only changes I made from the original recipe were cutting the salt by one third, using dried instead of fresh thyme, and adding more garlic. Here's the decadent recipe that will fill your kitchen with great smells. Even my 13-year-old daughter, who was doing homework at the kitchen table while listening to her iPod, looked up at one point and said, "Mmh! Something smells good, mom!" Here's my slightly adjusted version of Pinch My Salt's recipe:

Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Gratin

Ingredients:

1 lb. butternut squash, peeled and sliced about 1/8 inch thick

1 lb. sweet potato, peeled and sliced about 1/8 inch thick

1 tsp. dried thyme

1 generous tsp. kosher salt

fresh pepper to taste

2 cups shredded Manchego (or Gruyère–or even aged Gouda)

3 cloves garlic, pressed

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 400˚F. Butter a 9x13-inch casserole dish and set aside. Peel and slice butternut squash and sweet potatoes, grate cheese, and measure spices and heavy cream.

In the buttered casserole dish, spread half of the butternut squash out and sprinkle with 1/3 of the salt, pepper, thyme and 1/2 cup of cheese. Then spread half the sweet potatoes as the next layer, again sprinkling with 1/3 of the salt, pepper, thyme and 1/2 cup of cheese. Repeat layering with another layer of butternut and sweet potatoes. Finish by mixing 3 cloves of freshly pressed garlic with the heavy cream and pouring it over the dish. Sprinkle with the remaining 1/2 cup of cheese, cover the casserole and bake in the oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, remove the cover and bake 20 minutes more until the top is nicely browned. Remove the gratin from the oven and let it cool for 15-20 minutes before serving. Enjoy!

Note: Supposedly, this recipe makes 12 servings, but we live in Minnesota and it's getting cold outside, so we only get 6-8 servings out of this recipe. Oink, oink. :)

Chicken Noodle Soup

Nothing feels better when you're under the weather than an nice, piping hot bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup. I'm not sure if there is any truth to chicken noodle soup speeding up recovery when suffering from a common cold, but folk wisdom has said for centuries that it does. All I know is that it tastes good and my mom was a master at making a very simple, tasty version entirely from scratch. Here is the recipe–it comes in two steps: the first step describes how to make the chicken stock and cook the chicken, the second step describes how to finish the soup.

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup (Hühnersuppe)

STEP I

Ingredients for making chicken stock and cooking chicken:

1 4-lb. chicken, rinsed well, innards removed

10 cups water

1-2 stalks celery, cut in large chunks

1-2 carrots, cut in large chunks

1 large onion, cut in large chunks

2 bay leaves

1 tsp. salt

Preparation:

Put the chicken and all other ingredients in an 8-qt. stockpot, fill with water to cover the chicken (approximately 10 cups), and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer on very low for about 1 1/2 hours.

Remove the chicken and let it cool slightly before deboning. Strain broth and discard all of the vegetables. Return the strained broth to the pot. You now have the clear chicken stock and cooked chicken to make the chicken soup you will actually eat.

STEP II

Ingredients for finishing chicken soup:

all the chicken stock from the first step

2 stalks celery, sliced

2 carrots, sliced or diced

1 tsp. salt (or a little more to taste)

pepper to taste

To the chicken broth add celery, carrots, diced chicken meat, salt and pepper. Bring everything to a boil and simmer on low heat for approximately 20 minutes until the fresh vegetables are tender.

Meanwhile bring a pot of water to a boil and cook egg noodles according to package directions. Serve a scoop of egg noodles with each bowl of chicken soup. Makes about 10-12 generous servings.

Tip: Keep noodles and soup separate, so the noodles don't get soggy but stay al dente. Occasionally, my mom served the soup with rice (buttered rice… she always used butter for cooking…) which is very good, too.

Hello Snow!

Big surprise when waking up this morning: it had snowed! Not a huge accumulation, of course, it is after all only October 10, but enough to cover all the roofs and lawns in a thin blanket of white. Our dogs, Lenny and Louie, had a very surprised look on their faces when I let them out the door into the yard. I think they had forgotten what snow was!

Now they're back in the house, everyone is still asleep, but the first pot of coffee is brewing and I'm thinking about making some nice cauliflower-cheese soup. My favorite recipe for this soup comes from Molly Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook. The only ingredient in it that I don't use is caraway because my husband doesn't care for it. Other than that, the recipe is just to our liking. Try it for yourself!

Cauliflower-Cheese Soup

Ingredients:

1 large potato, peeled and diced (about 2-3 cups diced)

1 large cauliflower, cut or broken into florets (put aside 2 cups of florets)

1 medium carrot, peeled and chopped

3 medium cloves garlic, peeled

1 1/2 cups chopped onion

1 1/2 tsp. salt (I like kosher or sea salt)

4 cups water

2 cups (packed) grated cheddar (plus extra for garnishing each serving)

3/4 cup milk (I find whole milk tastes better, though lowfat is okay)

1 tsp. dill

1/2 tsp. caraway seeds (I always leave them out…, but instead a sprinkling of freshly cut parsley for garnish is nice)

black pepper to taste

Preparation:

Place potato, cauliflower (except for the 2 cups reserved), carrot, garlic, onion, salt, and water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil, then simmer until all vegetables are very tender. Purée in a blender or food processor, and transfer to a kettle or Dutch oven.

If you like a little texture in your soup, set aside 2 cups of the cauliflower florets and steam them reserved until just tender. Add these to the purée along with all remaining ingredients. Heat gently, and serve topped with a little extra cheese.

Fish Stew

An Italian restaurant we visit occasionally serves a delicious fish stew called zuppa di pesce. It's chockful of salmon, shrimp and scallops that swim in a sea of flavorful broth that beckons to be soaked up with crusty bread. Since I've been spending a major part of this week serving leftovers from last weekends party and I still had more than a pound of already poached salmon in the refrigerator, I decided to make my own version of fish stew to use the fish before it turned bad. I added a bag of frozen shrimp and a bag of frozen scallops that I had in the freezer and, even though fresh always tastes better, I thought a stew would be a tasty way to prepare the frozen and the already poached seafood.

My brother-in-law Tim recreated his own version of the restaurant's fish stew a few years ago and it is delicious. I had his recipe and another one from a cookbook to get me started, but ultimately I had to use what I had on hand. The resultat: really good! So here's the recipe:

Fish Stew

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp. butter

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 lb. mushrooms, sliced

1 cup onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1-1 1/2 lbs. salmon, poached

8-oz. bag of frozen shrimp

12-oz. bag of frozen scallops

1 14-oz. can diced tomatoes

2 14-oz cans chicken broth

1 cup dry white wine

1 tsp. dried oregano

1 tsp. dried basil

salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

Heat butter and oil in a 4-6 qt. large pot over medium high eat. Add mushrooms, sprinkle several pinches of salt on top of mushrooms, and sauté for a few minutes. When the mushrooms start drawing water, add onions and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are tender. Add salmon, shrimp and scallops and stir. Add diced tomatoes with juices, chicken broth, wine, oregano, basil and pepper. A couple of good cranks with the peppermill will be fine. Bring mixture to a boil and immediately turn down heat to a low simmer. Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, until flavors have blended. If using fresh fish, simmering the stew may be increased to 30 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings if needed.

Suggestion: Our Italian restaurant–and my brother-in-law Tim–also add fresh chopped asparagus to the soup. That is really good. If you choose to add asparagus, just cut fresh spears into 1 1/2-inch chunks and add to the soup during the last 10 minutes of simmering.

Hunt for the Perfect Overnight Waffle

A waffle is like a pancake with a syrup trap.

–Mitch Hedberg, comedian–

If you have, like me, searched high and low for the perfect waffle recipe, look no further because I have arrived in waffle heaven. And as soon as you make the recipe following below, you will be there, too. The waffle batter is prepared ahead of time–at our house that usually means at night–and used for breakfast waffles in the morning. I stumbled upon it at gourmet.com, and lo and behold, it actually is a Fannie Farmer Cookbook recipe. This is the best waffle recipe ever if you like tasty waffles that are crisp on the outside. The only comment I have to make is that the batter is very thin and will not bake properly in a Belgian waffle maker; however, it is perfect for a traditional or classic waffle iron. So, without much further ado, here is the perfect waffle recipe:

Overnight Raised Waffles

Ingredients:

1/2 cup warm water

2 1/4 tsp. dry yeast

2 cups warm milk (I like using whole milk)

1/2 cup melted butter

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 tsp. baking soda

Preparation:

Use a large mixing bowl because the batter will rise considerably. Start by mixing the warm water and yeast in the mixing bowl. Let sit for 5 minutes. Then add the milk, butter, salt, sugar and flour and mix until all the ingredients are blended well. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit overnight at room temperature.

In the morning add the beaten eggs and baking soda to the mix and stir. To bake waffles, pour about 1/2 cup of the very thin batter onto a hot waffle iron and bake. Serve immediately and top with fresh fruit–berries are delicious–and maple syrup. Makes about 7 seven-inch round waffles. Any unused batter can be stored for a few days in the refrigerator.

Mixed Veggie Medley

When I woke up this morning, I felt like consuming something light and clean. A look into the fridge revealed a number of great-looking veggies, so the idea of a nice fresh juice came to mind. I knew Emily would appreciate it, too. This is not an inexpensive juice, but the taste is definitely worth the effort. So much goodness in one little glass!

Mixed Veggie Medley

Ingredients

4 large carrots

4-5 apples

1-2 cucumbers

2 stalks celery

1/2 head broccoli (about 3 cups)

1/2 bunch Italian parsley

Preparation

Wash all produce, cut into pieces small enough to run through a juicer, and juice. Makes approximately 1 quart of fresh, delicious juice.

Sweet Corn Soup

The first time I had corn, raw, I was fifteen and my parents had decided to take my brother and me on a week-long fall vacation to a farm in Bavaria. Being big-city kids, my brother and I enjoyed being outdoors and helping with the harvest at the time. The day we helped with harvesting corn, I remember sitting on top of a huge pile of corn on the trailer the tractor pulled off the fields at the end of the day. But before leaving the fields, the farmer we stayed with peeled an ear and handed it to me, saying, "eat." I dug my teeth into the corn and thought it was quite tasty. Up until that day, I didn't know people could eat fresh corn. Actually, I didn't know anyone who ever ate fresh corn. Corn, in my experience, was fed to the animals. At least in Germany.

Many years later, after having moved to Minnesota, I found out that most people in this part of the world spend the time from mid-July to mid-August eating corn-on-the-cob almost every day–more or less. Corn-on-the-cob, heated for only a few minutes in boiling water, then slathered with butter, salt and pepper or sprinkled with a little Parmesan cheese, is a staple in our house every summer. We eat so much that the ears quite literally start coming out of our ears, and by the time we're tired of corn, the season is over, and, satiated, we can wait and anticipate the new crop next year.

Today, I found myself in the kitchen with a scant dozen ears that I wanted to transform into something other than corn-on-the-cob. My sister-in-law Julie has a wonderful recipe for corn chowder that is out of this world, but I thought it would be a bit heavy for the high temperatures and humidity we've been experiencing this weekend. I settled on a recipe for sweet corn soup that I found in Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food. According to the girls, it's delicious–they already had seconds. What I love about it is that the ingredients are simple, the soup is easy to prepare, and it is tasty.

Sweet Corn Soup

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1/2 very large sweet onion (roughly 2+ cups chopped)

10-12 ears of fresh corn

salt (I like kosher and/or sea salt)

2 qts. water

Preparation:

Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat, but be careful not to brown the butter. Add the chopped onion and sauté until the onion is softened and translucent, about 15 minutes. Yes, the onion will quite literally swim in butter, but that will all change once the corn is added.

Meanwhile, chuck the corn (cut the kernels off the cobs). After the onion is softened, add the corn and sauté for 2-3 minutes. Add salt liberally. Then add the water.

Increase heat to high and bring to a boil. Boil soup for a few minutes, no more than five minutes. Turn off the heat and puree in batches to desired consistency. Adjust seasoning with salt if needed. Yield: about 3 quarts.

Fresh Basil Pesto from the Garden

It's been pretty much three months since I last blogged, but tonight's dinner was just too fabulous to pass up writing about. We've been busy with construction in the house and family visiting from Germany, so there was not a lot of time left for me to blog. It's good to get back into the swing of things and record memorable meals for posterity.

I have made basil pesto many times, but I don't recall the last time I thought it was really outstanding. Tonight's pesto was the best I recall from recent years. Maybe it was the unbelievably fragrant homegrown, organic basil that made the difference–or the time I took to meticulously toast the pine nuts or the high-quality organic extra-virgin olive oil I used. Whatever it was, tonight's pesto was better than any pesto I remember. So it's worth writing about. Try it for yourself. Indulge, and let the goodness of summer explode on your taste buds!

Fabulous Fresh Basil Pesto from the Garden

Ingredients:

2 cups tightly packed fresh basil (equals about 4 cups lightly packed or 2 oz.)

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts

1 very large clove of garlic

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese (a very generous 1/4 cup that is!)

and more freshly grated parmesan cheese to sprinkle over the meal

Preparation:

I do have a mortar and pestle, but enjoying the convenience of modern kitchen equipment, I always make my pesto in the food processor.

Add the first three ingredients–basil, pine nuts and garlic–and chop coarsely. Then, while running the food processor blade on the continuous setting, slowly pour in the olive oil. Add the cheese and, voilà, your pesto is ready to be tossed with hot pasta. Serve in pasta bowls and add a sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan cheese on top. Enjoy!

By the way, pesto can be frozen as long as the cheese is not added. So, if you plan on freezing your pesto for later use, freeze it without adding any cheese and add the cheese after your pesto is defrosted. Pesto is also good on sandwiches. My favorite sandwich consists of two slices of sprouted grain bread, pesto smeared on both slices, and 1/2 avocado and a sliced tomato sandwiched in between. That's yummy! Yield: about 1 cup of pesto.

The Vacation's Over

Yesterday marked the one-month anniversary of me not having added anything to this blog for exactly 31 days, the entire month of May. What does that say about me? That I haven't cooked in a month? That we ordered take-out too many times? That I was too busy? Too lazy? Too side-tracked with other things? Too uninspired? Too tired? Too indecisive what to write about? I'm afraid all of the above and more.

Actually, I have served quite a few meals here at home, but I'm afraid a lot of them could all fall under the label "leftover" meals. Come to think of it, I've served so many "leftover" and "fridge-cleaning" meals, day after day, I wonder where the original meals actually came from.

In any case, it's about time to stop this nonchalance. There are meals to be cooked and recipes to be recorded if for no one else than myself and my offspring. Tonight I still have to write something more personal for a special person in my life. So I promise to myself to return to the blog tomorrow with a recipe for something actually concocted in our kitchen and enjoyed!

Cinco de Mayo

Today is Cinco de Mayo, a holiday that commemorates the Mexican army's victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. Even though I've heard that it's a day not celebrated in all parts of Mexico, here in the US it is also a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride.

In our family, no one even has a stitch of Hispanic heritage in their bloodline, but–always looking for inspiration for what to cook for dinner–Cinco de Mayo translated in my head into tacos, salsa, and guacamole. So we cooked some Mexican food for dinner tonight.

I have to admit up-front: Mexican food is not my favorite. I will eat it in a pinch, but when hungry, Mexican is not what comes to mind. Mostly because I didn't grow up with it, and, no matter where I've eaten it, Mexican food has usually struck me as an over-sized plate filled with overly cooked and mashed foods, doused with enchilada sauce and melted cheese. A picture of yellow, brown and red–not exactly pretty.

However, when we make tacos at home, I absolutely love them. I also love all the accompanying dishes, such as salsa and guacamole. So, for the record, I'm going to share our favorite (MY favorite) Mexican dishes with our favorite trimmings. I have absolutely no idea how authentic our recipes are, but suffice it to say that I love 'em, and they look beautiful because they're vibrant and colorful and not covered under a layer of melted cheese.

Tonight we made shrimp tacos with mango salsa and guacamole. It was a terrific meal with fabulous flavor. It took a while to prepare because washing all the veggies and chopping them up takes time. But the result was well worth the effort. Here are the recipes:

Shrimp Tacos

Ingredients for 4 servings:

1 lb. shrimp, preferably uncooked

butter

fresh garlic, minced

cayenne

cumin

lemon pepper

salt

soft shell tacos

Preparation:

Sauté shrimp in butter with garlic. Sprinkle with a little cayenne pepper, cumin, lemon pepper and salt. Shrimp are done when opaque. Serve with warmed soft taco shells.

Mango Salsa

Ingredients:

1 mango, diced

1/2 cup diced cucumber

1/3 cup red onion, diced

1 jalapeño, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

juice of 1/2 lime (about 1+ Tbsp.)

a couple of dashes red pepper flakes

salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl and let stand, in the refrigerator, for 30-60 minutes before serving.

Guacamole Calabas

(This recipe is from Marilyn Diamond's The American Vegetarian Cookbook from the Fit for Life Kitchen)

Ingredients:

2 green onions, minced

1 large garlic clove, minced or pressed

1 large tomato, minced

1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

1/2 cup minced fresh parsley

1/4 cup minced cilantro

1 tsp. cumin

1/2 tsp. chili

Cayenne to taste

4 ripe avocados, peeled, seeded, and mashed (approximately 2 cups)

Salt

Freshly ground pepper to taste

Preparation:

Chop all vegetables by hand or use a food processor, to process ingredients in the order given, using the steel blade. Yields 3-4 cups.

Tip: We like our guacamole a little chunky, so I usually mash the ingredients with a fork or a potato masher. If completing the guacamole in the food processor, use the pulse setting only and scrape the bowl frequently, otherwise it's easy to over-process.

To serve, we layer a sprinkling of grated cheddar cheese, shrimp, guacamole and salsa and top the taco with chopped fresh cilantro and a drizzle of salad dressing (optional). Enjoy! This is really good stuff.

Perfect Spring Day, Perfect Smoothie

Here's a perfectly blended smoothie in a beautiful color for a splendid spring day:

Ingredients:

1 papaya, peeled, seeded, cut into chunks

1 orange, peeled and cut into chunks

3/4 to 1  cup of low-fat yogurt

dash of nutmeg

dash of stevia to sweeten smoothie (optional)

Preparation:

Blend all ingredients in a blender for at least 30 seconds until smooth. Pour into glasses. Makes about two 12-oz. servings.

One More Pot Roast…

One more rainy day this week, perfect for one more little pot roast before summer beckons with lighter fare. At least that's what I thought today, realizing the pot roast my daughter Emily and I had bought at the grocer's a few days ago should be turned into a hearty dish no later than today.

Trying to keep the dish simple, I worked with what I had in the refrigerator and the pantry: onions, carrots, potatoes, salt and pepper, and … a little red wine.

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp. olive or canola oil

1 pot roast, 3-3.5 lbs.

2-4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 large sweet onion, cut into chunks

1/2 cup red wine

6 large carrots, peeled, sliced length-wise, and cut into 2-inch pieces

Preparation:

Season the roast with salt and pepper from all sides. Heat oil in a heavy pot, such as a Dutch oven, that can be placed into the oven if you decide to finish the roast in the oven rather than on the stovetop.

Brown roast from all sides for a few minutes. Remove roast from pot. Add cut up onion and garlic and place the roast on top of everything. Add red wine. Cover the pot with a lid and reduce the heat to a very low simmer. Simmer for about 3 1/2 hours, flipping the roast once. About 30-40 minutes before the end of the cooking time, add the carrots to the pot.

When the roast is done, remove and set aside on a cutting board and cover with foil. Remove the carrots and put into a bowl for serving. You can strain the gravy, but I decided to take a potato masher and mash the onions into the gravy. No thickening of the gravy was required.

Serve pot roast, carrots and gravy with boiled, salted potatoes. Yum. This was a good dish. Simple ingredients and no-fuss cooking produced a delicious, comforting dinner on a rainy day.

Homemade Hamburger Buns

I have a friend in Colorado who bakes bread for her family several times a week. She bakes bread for sandwiches and also makes her own homemade hamburger buns. What a luxury! It has never occurred to me to put in the amount of time to make my own buns for hamburgers, even though I love buns, rolls and other small breads.

When I was a kid, I loved eating dry hard rolls for a snack and I usually followed my own ritual: I'd bite off one end of the roll, take my fingers to dig out and eat the soft, chewy inside of the roll before munching the crust.

In any case, today we were planning buffalo burgers for dinner and with enough time on my hands, I thought I'd give making my own hamburger buns a try. As always, I let the breadmaker do the messy part of kneading and letting the dough rise once for me. The rest was a cinch and we all agreed when eating our burgers that these were the tastiest buns we've ever had.

Adapted from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups bread flour

2 1/4 tsp. active dry yeast

1 Tbsp. butter, softened at room temperature

1 cup hot water (120˚–130˚F)

Preparation:

Add all ingredients to the pan of a breadmaker, in the order suggested by the breadmaker manufacturer, and process on the dough setting. When the dough is done, turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface, divide into 6 pieces and shape them into balls. Put them onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or a Silpat mat, cover with wax paper and let rest for about 5 minutes. Flatten each ball with the palm of your hand and let rest for another 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400˚F. Brush buns with a little milk and sprinkle either sesame or poppy seeds on top, if so desired. Then bake the buns on a center rack in the oven for about 20 minutes. They are done when nicely browned. Cool buns on a rack and serve.

Green Goodness

A few years ago I discovered how good green smoothies are and thought, what an easy way to ingest a lot of fresh, green vegetables. When I started making them, I only used fruit and spinach because drinking a green drink is a little bit of an acquired taste–at least for starters. Spinach actually tastes quite sweet compared to many other greens, so it is perfect to blend with fruit, making the combination very palatable to the "green smoothie novice." Over time, I started adding a few other things, such as a leaf of kale, collard greens, or a stalk of celery. These additions make a green smoothie taste a little more robust and–in the case of celery–even a bit salty. My husband likes them that way, but our kids prefer the "sweeter" version. Here's the recipe for a very simple green smoothie, just the way my daughter Emily likes it:

Ingredients:

1 mango

5 oz. baby spinach

1 1/2 to 2 cups water

Preparation:

Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth and creamy. This makes about 2 large servings (12 oz. each or more).

Pretty Tasty All-Fruit Breakfast Smoothie

It's been very busy around here for the last couple of weeks and all I have time for today is record the recipe for a pretty tasty breakfast smoothie, dairy-free, that I whipped up in a jiffy this morning before dashing off to another appointment:

Dairy-free Breakfast Smoothie:

1 orange

1 banana

1 apple

6 oz. orange juice, ideally calcium-enriched and non-pulp

Mix all ingredients in a blender on high speed and serve. Makes about one 20-24 oz. single serving that'll fill you up till lunch-time.

My Favorite Spaghetti Sauce

When I was a kid, I loved the days my mom would cook a noodle dish. Unfortunately, this didn't happen very often. While my dad and I loved noodles and–to a degree–rice, my mom and my brother were potato people when it came to starches. So since my mom was the eminent cook, we had potatoes served with a dish at least once a day. Noodle and rice dishes, however, were extremely rare. So rare, indeed, that I don't even recall what sort of sauce the noodles were served with. Rice was usually served with chicken soup. I think that was pretty much it.

As a student I finally discovered Italian restaurants near the university where I studied that served an incredibly tasty bowl of pasta for a price I could afford. One of my favorite restaurants was called "Roma" and it served both Greek and Italian food. The restaurant is still around, and, as a matter of fact, the last time I went to Germany, we all celebrated my brother's 40th birthday at the place with great food–just the way I remembered it.

In my husband's family, noodles–elevated here to "spaghetti"–were a more favored dish than in my family. So from the start of our marriage, there were automatically days that were designated as "spaghetti sauce" days. Making a tasty sauce to ladle over bland noodles all of a sudden seemed to be the height of good home-cooking. Between the two of us, my husband and I have made a ton of spaghetti sauce recipes, and even though the ingredients have varied, we both agree on one thing: a good spaghetti sauce needs to simmer for a long time over very low heat.

Now this is a busy week for our daughter Emily. It's tech week at the opera with 4 1/2-hour rehearsals every evening, opening night this Friday, and two performances on Saturday. She's very excited to be in an opera and sing on stage, but organizing her regular school-homework-piano life around the rehearsals is going to be challenging. Equally challlenging will be to get dinner on the table on time.

To get us all well-fed through the week, I figured I'd make at least one dish that makes a large amount and keeps well. That way I don't have to cook from scratch every day, and can pull dinner together in a matter of minutes. So today I made spaghetti sauce the way my husband likes it: thick and chunky and full of meat with a depth of flavor that only comes from long simmering over very low heat. It's a recipe that started many years ago with a recipe from an Italian cookbook, but it has undergone so many changes and revisions that it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the original. I can honestly say this is my recipe:

Spaghetti Sauce

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp. butter

1-2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 large carrot, finely chopped

2 stalks celery, finely chopped

1 yellow onion, finely chopped

1 lb. mild Italian sausage (or try hot Italian sausage for a little extra zippy flavor)

3-4 cloves garlic, pressed or minced

1 6-oz. can tomato paste (I know it's a lot–don't be shy!)

1 28-oz. can crushed tomatoes with basil

1 -14-oz. can tomato sauce

1 14-oz. can diced tomatoes, undrained

1-2 tsp. dried basil

1 tsp. dried oregano

salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

1. Heat oil and butter over medium heat in a large, heavy pot, such as a Dutch oven, if you have one. Add the onions, carrots and celery and sauté until all the ingredients are well mixed. Cover pot and let veggies soften for a few minutes until the onions become translucent. Don't forget to stir a few times.

2. Remove cover and turn heat to medium-high and add meat, breaking it up with a spoon. Brown meat until it is no longer pink, stirring from time to time.

3. Add garlic and mix in.

4. Add tomato paste and mix in. Add crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, basil and oregano, a little salt and pepper to taste. Mix ingredients well. If the sauce appears too thick, you may add 1/2 to 1 cup of water at this point.

5. Simmer sauce on very low heat for at least an hour or two, stirring occasionally. It really helps to have a stove with a dedicated simmer setting, but if your stove doesn't have one, use the lowest heat possible on your stove and stir the sauce more often.

Serve this sauce with your favorite pasta. In our family we all like spaghetti with it. Top it with freshly grated Parmesan cheese, or some Romano, which is a little more pungent. To round out the meal, add a simple green salad and a loaf of baguette.

Strawberry-Banana-Yogurt Smoothie

I made an excellent breakfast smoothie this morning:

Blend in a blender:

1/2 cup plain, low-fat yogurt

1 fresh banana

6 large strawberries, fresh or frozen

1/2 cup of cranberry water*

This makes about one 16-oz. glass of creamy, pale pink smoothie. Delicious! If the smoothie tastes a little too tart–after all, it all depends on how ripe the banana and how sweet the strawberries are–, you may want to add a little agave nectar or very, very little stevia (sweetleaf) extract. If you're unfamiliar with stevia, please check it out. It's a great and healthy alternative to sugar.

*I make a quart of cranberry water to either sip on its own throughout the day or to use when blending juices and smoothies by mixing 28 oz. of water with 4 oz. of unsweetened cranberry juice.

Kohlrouladen or Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

There is European deli in downtown Minneapolis called Kramarczuk's that sells a vast array of sausages and also serves Eastern European lunch fare in its adjacent restaurant. Almost every Saturday at around 2 p.m. when I pick up Emily at the opera center, I will inevitably hear her ask me if we can eat there. So sometimes we do. Some of our favorite foods at the restaurant are the pirogies and the stuffed cabbage rolls. To me, the cabbage rolls simply taste like my mother's.

Since we've had a couple of cold, rainy days and the grocery stores are still filled with cabbages because they're in season and we just had St. Patrick's Day, I decided it would be fun to try cooking stuffed cabbage rolls, a dish my mom regularly made in the cold weather season, but that I have never tried. The tricky part was to find a recipe that would bring back the exact taste and texture of my mom's Kohlrouladen. Since I don't have her recipe–she never wrote it down, but just made it–my memories had to serve me as a guide to the ingredients and for quantities, techniques and cooking times I consulted other people's recipes.

Frankly, it took me a great deal of time today to make stuffed cabbage rolls because I haven't eaten my mother's dish for a very, very long time, and this was my first-ever attempt at making them. But as I started preparing the cabbage leaves, the memories kept coming forth and soon I had all the information I needed for a recipe. In the end, I had a very tasty dish that was authentic and put me right back into my mom's kitchen. The following recipe is enough to make 4-6 servings and can easily be doubled.

Kohlrouladen or Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

Ingredients:

For the cabbage rolls:

1 large cabbage (white, green or Savoy)

1/2 pound ground beef

1/2 pound ground pork

1 cup diced onion, sautéed in a little olive oil until translucent

1 egg

1/2 cup cooked rice

1 tsp. kosher salt

freshly ground pepper

For the sauce:

1/2-1 cup diced onion

remaining cabbage (after leaves are removed), chopped

kosher salt

olive oil

1/2 cup of dry white wine

1-28 oz. can crushed tomatoes

1 cup water

2 Tbsp. brown sugar

Preparation:

To prepare the cabbage, bring a large pot of water to a boil and cut the core out of the cabbage. Place the whole head into the water and cook for about 5 minutes, just long enough to soften the leaves and make peeling them off easier. Remove the cabbage from the boiling water and gently peel away its leaves. Set the peeled off leaves aside and let dry for stuffing. There should be at least 12 to 18 cabbage leaves. Per cabbage roll I like to take 2-3 leaves, depending on size.

Chop the remaining part of the head of cabbage into small pieces and set aside.

Sauté a cup of finely diced onion in about 2 tsp. olive oil just until the onions become translucent and set aside to cool off a little.

Mix the ground meats, egg, rice, sautéed onion, salt and pepper well until the mixture is nice and homogeneous.

Take 2 or 3 dried cabbage leaves, cut out the tough core stems and layer them on top of each other, so that there are no visible holes. Spoon 2 Tbsp. of the meat mixture onto the bottom part of the cabbage leaves, fold the bottom part over the meat once, then fold in the left and right sides of the leaves and keep rolling upwards. Place the cabbage roll seam-side down on a cookie sheet and continue until all the meat filling and leaves are used up.

For the simmering sauce, heat a little olive oil in a large pot and sauté roughly 1/2 to 1 cup of diced onion and the chopped cabbage until they're translucent and slightly golden and softened. Add the wine, if using, and sauté a bit more. Add the crushed tomatoes, water and brown sugar and mix well. Bring to a boil. Add the stuffed cabbage rolls, seam-side down, turn down the heat and let them simmer on very low heat for about 1 1/2 hours. You may want to check for doneness after about an hour to see if the cabbage is softened enough by pricking it with a fork.

This dish is traditionally served in Germany with boiled salt-water potatoes. At our house, everyone really enjoyed my first attempt at Kohlrouladen. Dan, my husband, thought I had a winner and I think my mom would have approved, too. For my part, I have to say that spending a lot of time in the kitchen today to cook stuffed cabbage rolls made a lot of memories come back, happy and also bittersweet. I should probably tell you more about my mom some other time.

Cucumbers in Sour Cream

Today was an incredibly warm and sunny day. It must have been about 60 degrees–abolutely phenomenal! Some people were walking around in shorts and sleeveless tops! After dropping off Emily at the Opera for choir practice, I ended up walking around downtown with the mother of one of her fellow singers and raked up about 5 miles on my pedometer. It was a good walking day. :)

In the evening, Dan felt like grilling, so we got some chicken drumsticks to throw on the grill. As a side dish, I suggested cool cucumber salad, and Dan immediately liked the idea.

Now I remember my mom often making an incredibly tasty cucumber salad in the summertime that was drenched in a delicious, creamy white sour cream sauce. It was usually my job to wash and slice the cucumbers on a mandoline and she mixed the sour cream dressing and folded all ingredients together. I do not have my mom's recipe, but a few years ago, I obtained Dan's mom's recipe and I swear it tastes just like my mom's. Just as Sweden and Germany are not that far from each other, Swedish and German tastes are pretty close, too, I think. In any case, cucumber salad is what I made tonight to accompany Dan's chicken drummies. And here's the cherished recipe:

Grandma Dot's Cucumbers in Sour Cream

Ingredients:

3 medium cucumbers, peeled and thinly sliced (if organic, you can leave the skin on)

1 cup dairy sour cream

1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped green onions (red onion is a nice substitute)

2 Tbsp. white vinegar (white champagne vinegar is delicious, too!)

3/4 tsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preparation:

Thinly slice cucumbers on a mandoline or with a knife and mix with the dressing, comprised of the rest of the ingredients. Mix well and let rest for at least 30 minutes before serving. If you only serve four for dinner, there may be leftovers, but this salad keeps well for at least another day or two.

Mango Grapefruit Juice

Did you know that a large pink grapefruit can yield upwards of eight ounces of juice? If you're lucky you get a lot more than that. I just juiced a large pink grapefruit from Florida with a reamer and got a whopping 12 ounces of juice!

The following juice is a great way to start the day or infuse an afternoon with a little pick-me-up. It's a recipe from Easy Juicing by Nicola Graimes and she called it the…

Marilyn Mango

Ingredients:

1 pink grapefruit, halved

1 large mango, peeled and sliced

Preparation:

Squeeze out all the juice from the grapefruit and blend with the mango slices in a blender. Blended mango gives juices a very smooth and silky texture and I love the creaminess of this blend. Pour the juice into two glasses if you're in a sharing kind of mood and give one glass to the one you love–or guzzle it all down by yourself. :)

Of All Sorts of Pancakes

When I grew up, lunch was the biggest meal of the day, and it was always a warm meal cooked from scratch by my mother. Some lunches were more elaborate than others, but some of the most simple ones were my favorites when coming home from school: Spiegelei auf Brot (fried egg on rye bread), Eierpfannkuchen mit Blaubeersoße (egg pancakes with blueberry sauce), and Kartoffelpfannkuchen mit Apfelmus (potato pancakes with applesauce).

When my mom made potato pancakes, it was a labor of love because it always took a while to prepare: using a box grater, she finely handgrated a bunch of raw, peeled potatoes, mixed them with an egg, a little salt, and fried them in butter–she always used butter for frying–until they were browned and crisp on the outside. They were dense and substantial and served with apple sauce. Try the following recipe and see if you can't be a convert to potato pancakes:

Kartoffelpfannkuchen (Potato Pancakes)

Ingredients:

1 lb. potatoes, peeled and grated

1 large egg (or larger than large egg…:))

1/2 tsp salt

1/4-1/2 grated onion (optional)

butter for frying

Preparation:

Peel and grate potatoes. Add a slightly beaten egg, salt and a little chopped onion, if desired. Mix everything together. Heat butter (or a little oil) in a frying pan and ladle batter into pan. Fry until golden brown on each side and serve with applesauce.

So, these were the pancakes of my childhood–they were definitely lunch fare for me. Now on the very first day I ever woke up in America, my then-future-mother-in-law Dorothy asked me what I wanted for breakfast and asked, "Pancakes?" I responded, kind of confused, "For breakfast?" Little did I know what American pancakes were like. I was soon to find out. Dorothy's pancakes were golden brown, fluffy and light, and often made with Bisquick. She served them with fresh fruit and syrup, a couple of strips of crisp bacon or sausage patties on the side. This was a tasty breakfast and for a number of years my husband and I made pancakes using Bisquick often. But one day, after we had become parents and were trying to feed our toddler for breakfast and didn't have any Bisquick in the house, we discovered that you can actually make pancakes totally from scratch. (Duh!) It was the day we discovered Deborah Madison's recipe for oatmeal pancakes in her book, "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone." This has been our absolute favorite pancake recipe for breakfast ever since. Here it is:

Oatmeal Pancakes

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups rolled oats

2 cups buttermilk

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

2 Tbsp. brown sugar or maple syrup

1/4 cup canola oil

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 cup flour

1/4 tsp. grated nutmeg

1/2 tsp. baking soda

Preparation:

Stir the oats and buttermilk together and let stand for 20 minutes. Beat the eggs with the vanilla, sugar, and oil, then stir in the soaked oats. Combine the dry ingredients and add them to the oat mixture as well. For each pancake, drop 1/4 cup batter onto a heated griddle or skillet and cook over a medium-low heat until the tops are covered with holes. Turn the cakes over and cook the second side. Because of the moisture in this batter, the cakes need to cook slowly, but turn them only once.

Just for good measure, I should probably throw in a couple more pancake recipes, so that I have all of the recipes we've enjoyed in the past in one neat and tidy location.

Mutti's Eierpfannkuchen (Mom's Egg Pancakes)

Ingredients for approximately 2 (8-in.) pancakes:

1 large or extra large egg

1/2 cup whole milk

1/3 flour

dash of salt

pat of butter

Preparation:

Blend egg, milk, flour and salt together in a bowl. Melt a pat of butter in a small (8-10 in. in diameter) non-stick pan. Ladle batter into the pan and brown pancake on both sides until it has a nice golden color. I personally have always liked Eierpfannkuchen a little bit more on the pale side of golden. To serve, my mom used to sprinkle the pancake with a very small amount of sugar and roll it up. This is heavenly! It always amazes me how something so simple can taste so good.

Variation:

My favorite variation to the plain and simple egg pancake has always been Apfelpfannkuchen, the egg pancake with apples. To make Apfelpfannkuchen, peel and core an apple and slice it thinly. Then, before adding pancake batter to the frying pan, arrange thin slices of apple on the bottom of the pan and sauté lightly to soften the apple. You can get really creative when arranging the apple slices and make pretty patterns. Then add the egg pancake batter and finish browning the pancake as described above. Sprinkle with a little sugar if you like and do not roll it up.

There are more variations to the egg pancake, but I better leave that for another day. :)

The Chocolate-Banana-Flax-Flax

Even though I love smoothies, I've never liked my husband's favorite breakfast smoothie because it's too sweet for my taste. But he loves it for some inexplicable reason. So, for the record, here it is. It's a quick recipe!

Dan's Chocolate-Banana-Flax-Flax

Ingredients:

2 scoops chocolate whey protein powder

1 banana

2 Tbsp. ground flax seeds

1 good and generous squirt of flax oil

1 cup water

Preparation:

Add all the ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth and creamy. Then drink.

Presto, Presto! Pasta Pesto!

I guess today's temperature got up to the low 40's–no wonder I felt like spring was just around the corner! Even though the yard outside is still covered in white, I couldn't resist making a dish that would remind us of the vibrant colors and juicy flavors of summer produce and give us a hint of the good food times still to come. The big box of fresh basil in the refrigerator beckoned to be turned into what my younger daughter Melissa used to call, "green spaghetti." So I went to work.

Fresh Basil Pesto

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp. raw sunflower seeds, toasted (a nice substitute for the pignoli I didn't have on hand)

1–4 oz. package of fresh basil, leaves only (about 2 cups of tightly packed basil)

3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 to 1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano–the real stuff!

1 lb. pasta (spaghetti or penne), cooked to al dente perfection

Preparation:

While cooking the pasta, put sunflower seeds, basil, garlic and half of the olive oil in a food processor and chop everything on the pulse setting. Scrape the walls of the food processor bowl, and then let the blade run while gradually adding the rest of the olive oil. When all the ingredients are blended well, remove the pesto–you will have about 1 cup of it–and add at least 1/2 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. If you like cheese a lot, like me, add more to your liking.

Drain pasta when it's done and immediately toss with the prepared pesto in a large bowl. Serve right away with a loaf of crusty baguette and a (green) salad. And maybe a little more cheese on top… Buon appetito!

The Dirty Dozen

Here are the "Dirty Dozen," the list of foods that are highest in pesticide residues, published today on the World's Healthiest Foods Web site. The Web site recommends that these foods should be grown organically if consumed:

Vegetables:
Bell peppers
Lettuce
Celery
Potatoes
Spinach

Fruits:
Peaches
Apples
Nectarines
Strawberries
Cherries
Grapes (imported)
Pears

Get a little boost through juice!

I've mentioned before that I really like my VitaMix blender and use it daily to purée soups, make smoothies, salad dressings, and even juices. Making juices in the blender keeps the whole food intact (well, in a chopped up sort of way) and retains all the fiber the fruit and veggies contain. Sometimes, though, I prefer not to have any fibrous texture in my juice and simply run all the veggies through a juicer. The advantage of juicing is that all the vitamins and minerals in fruit and veggies become readily available to our bodies. When blending juice and vegetables, the juice obviously retains the fiber content, thus slowing down nutrient absorption, which, I suppose, can be a good thing if you want to gradually stabilize your blood sugar. In any case, this morning, I made the most delicious green veggie juice using a juicer and thought I'd share the recipe:

Juice in a juicer:

4 large organic carrots

1 organic cucumber

1 large organic apple (I like Fuji, they're not too sweet and very juicy)

2 leaves organic kale, stalks and all

This makes approximately 16 oz. of great-tasting green juice. Enjoy!

Leek and Potato Soup

Leek and potato soup smells good, tastes good, and is simplicity itself to make.

(Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cooking)

It seems to me that we've had a lot of rich meals lately, so when I went to grocery store today and saw really great-looking leeks in the produce section, I knew instantly that I wanted to make a batch of leek-and-potato soup for dinner. Two humble vegetables simmered together…creating wonderful smells in the kitchen and an all-around satisfying meal. I could almost taste it. Yum! I bought three beautiful leeks and started happily chopping away when I arrived back home.

Leek and Potato Soup

Ingredients:

3 large leeks, white parts only, sliced, washed and dried

1 1/2 lbs. potatoes, peeled and diced

2 Tbsp. butter

6 cups water

1 to 1 1/2 tsp. salt

freshly milled pepper

2-4 Tbsp. heavy cream (optional)

chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Preparation:

Melt butter in a soup pot, add leeks and potatoes and cook covered over low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add 6 cups of water and 1+ tsp. of salt and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for about 30 minutes until the potatoes are soft.

When done, purée the soup in a blender or right in the pot, using a stick blender. Adjust seasonings and stir in a little heavy whipping cream to make the soup a little richer in color and in taste. Top with a sprinkling of freshly chopped parsley when serving. This makes the soup not only look more presentable, but enhances its flavor since potato and parsley always pair nicely.

By the way, when using organic potatoes, I sometimes leave the skin on. The flavor and look of the soup will be more rustic. The soup can be completed with a salad and a loaf of crusty bread.

Treats for Kids and Dogs

March 1! Ah, spring is – almost – in the air. I say "almost" because we just had a mother lode of fresh snow a few days ago, so no good-byes to hat hair and heavy boots quite yet. However, there's something about this time of year that makes me want to clear out all the clutter and cobwebs and get the house spring clean. Cleaning clutter is what I had planned for the afternoon, but I'm procrastinating by cooking a few new things in the kitchen. It's just more fun to cook than clean!

Two chicken dishes are on the burner right now: My daughter Emily has asked for a long time when I would make another batch of chicken satay, so she can take some to school for lunch, and I've always wanted to try making all-natural jerky as treats for our dogs, the buddies. So I started marinating chicken strips for a new recipe of chicken satay and started poaching one chicken breast to be cut into small strips and turned into jerky. It is important to precook poultry before drying it into jerky because the temperature of the dehydrator will not go above 155˚F, too low to kill salmonella.

All-natural Chicken Jerky:

Bring water to a boil and add skinless, boneless chicken breast. Simmer the chicken for about 10-15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the chicken breast. Remove chicken from poaching liquid and slice about 1/4-inch thick. Pat chicken slices dry and arrange on a dehydrator tray. Put into a dehydrator at 155˚F for about 4 hours to retain some "give" and chewiness. There are no flavorings whatsoever involved, just the meat, to avoid adding anything that would not be healthy for the dogs to consume.

But now on to the recipe for chicken satay. Usually, when I make this for the kids, I just sprinkle a little paprika on the chicken strips and sauté them in a little olive oil and serve them with a simple peanut sauce for dipping. Today I found a recipe for chicken satay by Tyler Florence on FoodNetwork that sounds a little more sophisticated and "adult," but still seems easy to prepare. Here is my slightly adapted version based on what I had in the fridge:

Chicken Satay:

Marinade:

1 cup low-fat plain yogurt

1 tsp. freshly grated ginger

2-3 cloves garlic, pressed

1 Tbsp. curry powder

1-1 1/2 lbs skinless, boneless chicken breast, sliced

Mix ingredients for the marinade (it will be very thick, actually) and pour over thinly sliced chicken breast, about 1/4 inch thick. Make sure to cover all chicken strips from all sides. Cover and let marinade for about two hours.

Preparation:

Heat a very small amount of oil with a high flash point in a non-stick pan and add the marinated chicken strips. I decided not to skewer the strips, but just sauté them without. This works fine for our family. Sauté strips 3-5 minutes on each side, until the meat is seared and looks lightly browned.

Peanut Dipping Sauce:

Combine:

1/2 cup all-natural peanut butter

2 Tbsp. tamari or shoyu (Japanese-style soy sauce)

1 tsp. red chili sauce

1 Tbsp. brown sugar

juice of 1/2 lemon

2-3 Tbsp. hot water

Mix all ingredients well and serve as dipping sauce for chicken strips. I will serve this dish with rice and cool cucumber salad.

What I learned from this cooking adventure:

1. Next time I make all-natural jerky for the dogs, I will try to slice the meat into thinner and longer pieces, rather than smaller, thicker pieces like today. Thinner pieces might be less of a choking hazard for little dogs. This is, of course, totally unscientific and not researched at all, just my very personal observation from making jerky and watching a large and a small dog consume the treat. Our little dog, Lenny, incidentally received his nickname "Herr Heimlich" after coughing, gagging and hacking when food got stuck in his throat the first time, and we thought we needed to brush up on our skills to perform the Heimlich maneuver.

2. Although my kids liked eating the chicken satay and peanut dipping sauce, both agreed that it made their lockers at school smell "like a skunk" when they opened it at lunch-time. (And I do always pack an icepack in their lunch boxes to keep things cool…)

Buttermilk Scones

I've been going to an ongoing Bible study at a nearby church for many years, actually since my older daughter was about 1 1/2 years old. I started going for a number of reasons:

1. I felt the need for talking with other adults at least once a week after having been a stay-at-home mom for a while.

2. I thought Bible study would enrich my life and help me get to know God better.

3. The group of people I joined had lifted me up and prayed for me when pregnant with my first daughter.

The other day, I volunteered to bring a little something to nibble on for fellowship time and picked a recipe for scones that I found in my present church's cookbook. So here it is. Adapted from the cookbook, "Real Lutherans Cooking":

Buttermilk Scones

Ingredients:

3 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 Tbsp. aluminum-free baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup butter

1 cup buttermilk

2 tsp. orange zest

1/2 cup chopped walnuts, optional

1 cup dried blueberries (or other dried fruit), optional

white sugar to sprinkle on top

Preparation:

Drop tablespoonfuls of the batter onto a greased cookie sheet. Sprinkle white sugar on top before baking. Bake at 400˚F for about 15 minutes. This is a great recipe served with lemon curd, jam and/or clotted cream (or just plain whipped cream in lieu of clotted cream!).

Variation:

Instead of making the scones with walnuts and dried blueberries, try dried cherries, or craisins and white chocolate chips. It's so good!

Roasted Fingerling Potatoes

It's late, but I'm still waiting for a loaf of banana bread to finish baking in the oven (the bananas really had to be used tonight), so I thought I'd write down our favorite preparation for fingerling potatoes as I'm reliving the wonderful flavors of tonight's dinner that we prepared for our guests, Jazz musicians Jana and Adam Meckler: grilled top sirloin steak, roasted fingerling potatoes, and green beans Asian-style.

Fingerling potatoes are quite literally the size of fingers and are sold in stores as small gourmet potatoes. Some stores sell a variety of different kinds in one bag, others sell just one kind. Either way, they are delicious and very easy to prepare. We like them roasted and very simply prepared. The following recipe was enough for six servings:

Roasted Fingerling Potatoes:

2 lbs. fingerling potatoes, washed and dried

olive oil

kosher salt

Preheat oven to 400˚F. Spread fingerling potatoes on a cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil. (I used pure olive oil because it has a higher smoke point than extra virgin and virgin olive oils, but I realize that I have to do more research about cooking with olive oil and which olive oil to use for what temperature.) Then use your hands to cover the potatoes with olive oil from all sides, sprinkle liberally with kosher salt and roast in the oven at 400˚F for about 40 minutes. Enjoy!

Vanilla Bean Ice-Cream with Blueberry Sauce

Dessert tonight was simple and delicious: store-bought vanilla bean ice-cream covered with warm, homemade blueberry sauce.

To make the sauce, combine in a saucepan:

2 cups fresh blueberries

2 Tbsp. water

3 Tbsp. honey

Heat everything on medium heat until the berries are soft, about 5 minutes. Remove and purée in a blender. Serve over ice-cream. Store left-overs for up to a week in the refrigerator.

By the way: this sauce is also good over pancakes and waffles for breakfast!

The consequences of living well…

You know how I can tell that I've put on a little extra weight? You may think it's because the pants don't fit the way they used to, and that may be so to a degree. But, no, I notice weight-gain when my sunglasses hug my temples just a little tighter, almost as if the frame of the glasses squeezes my face ever so slightly. I felt that squeeze on my face this morning after dropping off my older daughter at high school, so she can rehearse with all the choirs for next week's big concert. At home, I stepped on the scale, and confirmed what the fit of my sunglasses had already told me: I had lived a little too well the last couple of months.

Time to get back in shape. With spring and Lent fast approaching, I'm wondering if I should try something new this year and actually give up something for the time of Lent. I've thought about the concept of giving up something during Lent for several years, but have never had the discipline or will-power to do anything. I have yet to decide, but here's my list of things that I could be challenged with giving up:

1. Late nights up. (That'll be a tough one, since I got a double-whammy to be a night-owl from both sides of my family…)

2. Coffee. (I've heard people who gave up coffee actually start feeling better. Mmh.)

3. Sugar. (Chocolate is one of my favorite food groups…)

4. Meat. (Giving up meat wouldn't be a problem for me, but since I'm cooking for the family, it could be a serious problem. Got to think about that one.)

Homemade Oatmeal Bread

I have one daughter who loves Brownberry's Oatnut Bread for sandwiches and toast, and another daughter who will not eat a sandwich to save her life, unless it's made with homemade bread.

So, tonight I attempted to make a new oatmeal bread recipe that I hope my dear daughter will like. I've made breads with kamut, spelt and quinoa flours before and she's liked them, but this recipe uses none of the ancient grains. I just took the loaf out of the oven and it smells wonderful, but I'll have to wait and see what my daughter says. In any case, here's the recipe I made tonight. It's slightly adapted, but pretty much the way I found it in "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison. As usual, I used the bread machine to mix the dough and let it rise and then baked the loaf in the oven.

Homemade Oatmeal Bread

Add to the pan of a bread machine:

1 1/4 cups water

2 Tbsp. canola oil

1/4 cup raw honey

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup wheat bran

2 cups all-purpose white flour

1 cup white whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp sugar

2 1/4 tsp yeast

1 1/2 tsp salt

Process on the dough setting and let rise. Remove from the bread machine when dough cycle is done, remove dough, shape and roll in a mixture of wheat bran and oats, grease a 9x5 loaf pan and put loaf inside. Let loaf rise for about 30 minutes, then bake at 375˚F for about 45 minutes.

The Annual Sweetheart Dinner

Sixteen years ago, when we had a newborn daughter, no babysitter, and no reservations for a table at a restaurant, we decided to make a really nice dinner at home and invite the grandparents to come, too. This was one of the best decisions we ever made: we didn't have to think about Valentine's Day until the day actually happened, we didn't have to think about which restaurant to reserve a table at, we didn't have to dress up unless we wanted to, we didn't have to schedule a babysitter and pay her, we could eat and drink whatever we wanted and could afford, and, best of all, could spend it in the company of people who really mattered to us, playing music that we thoroughly enjoyed. Sixteen years ago today was the day we "invented" our "Sweetheart Dinner." 

I think this year we actually copied what we made 16 years ago, even though I don't recall what side dishes we served. The main dish, though, was pork tenderloin in yogurt sauce, a dish that was very tasty, but that I haven't made since. I lost the original recipe, but pieced together something from varying sources and this is what I came up with:

Pork Tenderloins in Yogurt Sauce

Ingredients:

2-2.5 lbs. pork tenderloin

1/4 cup+ butter

8 oz. grated gouda

1/2 onion, minced

4 cups whole milk yogurt

2 tsp Hungarian paprika

4 tsp instant chicken bouillon

salt to taste

Preparation:

Wash pork tenderloins and cut off skin, liberally salt and rub with paprika. Turn tenderloins in flour to dust and sear in butter all around.

Combine onions, yogurt, grated gouda and chicken bouillon and add to meat. Cover and simmer for 40 minutes until meat is done. Add chopped fresh parsley and finish sauce with a little corn starch or flour if desired.

We served this with oven-roasted fingerling potatoes and steamed green beans. Delicious!

Tip: The sauce will very easily curdle, even if you're very careful not to bring it to a boil. If curdling happens, just remove the meat and put the sauce in a blender and purée it until smooth. No one will know the difference and the taste is very nice and flavorful.

Morning Rush

As a kid, I remember a Heinzelmännchen cartoon on TV that depicted a little sleeping Heinzelmann that woke up when the alarm rang, hit the snooze button and proceeded to sleep with a smile on his face while a speech bubble above his head read, "only 15 more minutes." Or something like that. (Heinzelmännchen are, according to legend, little Black Forest gnomes that would come into the city of Cologne at night and do all the work for the people, so they could rest and be lazy during the day.)

This morning I had that kind of morning and overslept royally! Awakened by the soothing sounds of my wind chimes buzzer at 6 a.m., I hit the snooze button to stretch out for only one more minute and continued to sleep until 6:46 a.m. That spelled trouble! Of course I had planned on being up early and baking fresh rolls for the kids while making their school lunches, but with all the lost time, I had to make a new plan–and quickly.

The quickest breakfasts, and in all honesty some of the most nutritious, are fruit smoothies made in a high-speed blender. I use a VitaMix and love it. It can turn anything into a smooth puree. In any case, a quick look into the freezer and I found some frozen wild blueberries. The idea of a fruit smoothie was born. Bananas? Check. Yogurt? Check. I toasted two slices of whole grain bread and whipped up the following recipe in the blender:

Blueberry-Banana Smoothie:

2 bananas

1 cup yogurt

1 cup frozen blueberries

a good squirt of flaxseed oil

Blend everything until very smooth and creamy. Pour into two glasses. Makes about two 10-oz. servings–the perfect amount for the whirly-birds before school.

School lunches had to be done quickly, too, so I made sandwiches for the girls with ham and baby swiss cheese, cut up a whole orange for each one and filled their waterbottles with fresh water. Well, that was my rushed morning in a nutshell.

Buddy Dinner

Since I served the family left-overs from last night for dinner today, I had a little extra time and energy to cook for the buddies, our dogs, also known as Lenny and Louie (or Leonard and Lewis when they're in trouble!). They were very excited once they figured out I'd be cooking them a special meal!

I had a pound of chicken livers in the freezer that I defrosted and decided to poach for the boys. Basically, I brought a pot with water to a boil, added the chicken livers and simmered them for about 5 minutes. Then I drained the livers, but kept the broth, and rinsed the livers clean of junk that may have bubbled up to the surface during the poaching process.

Then I cut up a chicken liver for each buddy and topped their dry chicken kibble with it, spooned enough broth over the kibble to moisten it all and let them have THE FEAST.

Needless to say, they loved it, Poodle and German Shepherd alike.

Macaroni and Cheese

Homemade macaroni and cheese is one of those dishes we don't want to do without in the wintertime because it's simple and satisfying. And once I learned from Dorothy, my dear mother-in-law who is like my mother to me, how easy it is to make, I never looked back to any of the boxed varieties. Taste is definitely more important to me than convenience.

Now Dorothy is one of those cooks who are able to prepare a dish without a road-map, or recipe, so-to-speak. The first time I asked her how to make macaroni and cheese, she answered, "Oh, you just cook macaroni the usual way, then you make a white sauce and put some grated cheese in it, season to taste, mix it all up and serve."

Well, I've spent 20 years in the kitchen and have just within the last couple of years arrived at a place where I feel confident and comfortable enough to start cooking something without a recipe and actually know, sort of, what I'm doing and what the projected outcome may be. I guess it really is practice that makes you perfect. :)

Since making macaroni and cheese from scratch takes a little more time than preparing a boxed mix, I always plan to have time for cooking it. The ingredients are simple and few, and I usually have them on hand, but time is another matter. I would say it takes me about an hour from start to finish. I admit that I'm not trying to rush when cooking because I like cooking to be fun and an experience to be savored. There must be speedier cooks than me out there! No matter how much time is spent on cooking, though, homemade macaroni and cheese are always worth the extra effort. It's also a great way to use up a couple of different left-over cheeses. This is how I made macaroni and cheese today:

Macaroni and Cheese

Ingredients:

1 lb pasta

3 Tbsp. butter

3 Tbsp. flour

3 cups whole milk, heated

salt to taste

8 oz. (or more to taste) grated cheese (today I used gruyère, fontina, and romano, but try Swiss–it's delicate and delicious)

toasted breadcrumbs for the top

Preparation:

While cooking the pasta to al-dente-perfection, melt the butter in a small saucepan, add the flour to make a roux and let the roux gently boil under constant stirring for about 3 minutes. Then slowly add the heated milk, constantly stirring to avoid clumps, and let the mixture simmer on very low heat until thickened to the consistency of thick cream. At that point add all of the grated cheese and stir the sauce until it is smooth.

To make toasted breadcrumbs, melt 1 Tbsp. butter in an oven-proof pan on the stove-top and add fresh bread crumbs made by processing about 2 slice of your favorite lighter-colored bread in the food processor. Mix the melted butter and bread crumbs well, then put the pan into the oven at 350˚F and toast the bread crumbs for about 15 minutes.

As the next step, mix all of the pasta with the sauce, put everything into a buttered 9x13-inch casserole, top with toasted breadcrumbs, and bake the casserole in a 400˚F oven for about 15 minutes.

FYI, most of the steps for making homemade macaroni and cheese are largely based on "my" Dorothy's cryptic instructions and the more detailed instructions found in Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food.