Liquid Diet

Hello!

I have been MIA in the blog-o-sphere for a while. I got a nasty bug over reading week and had no voice! In my opinion it is the worst week to get sick, but at least I didn't have to teach like that.

This was just the perfect excuse to make soup! I wanted something easy on the throat but also have some nutrition hidden in there somewhere (queue dirty jokes).

Broccoli, Potato, Leek, Chickpea Soup

Ingredients:

- 2 leeks

- 2 bushles of broccoli

- 1 can of chick peas

- 2 large potatoes

- 1 Tbsp olive oil

- 8 cups soup broth

-season to taste with Cayenne pepper

Directions:

- In a pot saute leeks in olive oil until tender

- add cubed potatoes and cook for 5 minutes

- cover with soup broth and boil until potatoes are cooked (~30 min)

- add broccoli and chick peas and boil for 5 minutes

- use immersion blender to puree the soup until there are no chunks left.

Sauteed leeks with potatoes added

Everything in the pot before the immersion blender made an appearance.

(I couldn't wait for the steam to calm down hence the poor quality picture)

The finished product.

Please note this was a huge batch of soup, you might want to adjust according to your needs.

What is your favourite sick food? I really like Liptons chicken noodle, but I am pretty sure it is just a huge pile of salt.

Bean-a-licious

Today I am completely exhausted. I have no idea why, and I brewed the very last batch of Cuba coffee (from our trip this time last year) today. I want to go back to Cuba, who is with me?!

So I taught this morning, the lab is extracting trimyristin from nutmeg. It is a pretty decent lab, it just involves refluxing for 20 mintues and then recrystallizing the product. One of my kids asked me if they could get high off of their product--

this reminded me of Andre. I looked it up: we were not extracting the good stuff. The best part is that it smelled like nutmeg, which made me want to drink rum and egg nog. Also I looked up recipes for egg nog this christmas...it was bad! I don't want to make it, I just want to be in ignorant bliss when it comes to what I am drinking in this particular case.

Okay so this post has nothing to do with egg nog, or cuba, or teaching, or coffee... it is about Beans! Bean cookies to be exact.

We made these cookies this weekend, the recipe is from Carolyn, one of the Calgary peps. It is a super nice pick-me-up mid day, and pretty much

guilt free (if you sub the flour with more oats). Very healthy! And, if you get the right oats, they could be gluten free, great for those poor kids who can't have gluten.

White Kidney Bean Cookies

Ingredients:

-2 cups of oatmeal

-1 cup of all purpose flour

-1 can of white kidney beans

-1 egg

-1 Tbsp butter

-1 tsp vanilla

-1 cup brown sugar

-1 tsp baking soda

-1 Tbsp ground flax

-1/2 Tbsp hemp protein powder (optional)

-1/2 cup white chocolate chips

-1/2 cup walnuts (or any other nuts)

-1/2 cup Crasins

Directions:

-Process oats in food processor until it become a flour consistency. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl (oats, flour, sugar, baking soda)

-Put beans into food processor & process until liquid, now add ground flax, vanilla and process

-Mix the wet and dry ingredients and stir in the chocolate chip, crushed walnuts and crasins

-Place on cooking sheet in desired size and shape (these do not melt down when cooked)

-Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes.

Et Voyla!

Cheers,

Kirsten

Burning with Love

HELLO!

Today is Chili Cook off day!!! There was a great turn out, 13 chilis were entered! My favourite chili was medium heat and had chocolate in it! There were hot dogs sold there so I made an awesome chili dog. There were three super hot entries, one of them made two people run out of the room, I was not brave enough to give them a try.

I was one of two people to enter a vegetarian chili. I meant to turn on the slow cooker over night but turns out the blender was plugged in, so it was a bit runnier than I would have liked but still tasty.

Vegetarian Chili

Ingredients:

-1 can red kidney beans

- 1/2 can white kidney beans (the other half was used for something else...)

- 3/4 cup dried chick peas

- 3/4 cup dried black beans

-1 onion

-6 cloves of garlic

-1 jalepeno peppers (with seeds)

-2 cerano peppers (with seeds)

-2 carrots

-2 celery stalks

-1 can of tomatoes

-1 can of tomato paste

-2 cups of soup stock

-4 tbsp chili powder

-1 tsp cumin

-1/2 tsp cayenne

-2 tbsp brown sugar

-1 tbsp cocoa powder

-1 tsp dry mustard

-1 tsp vinegar

Directions:

-cover dried beans in water and boil for ~ 1 hour or until beans are soft (you may need to top up the water depending on how much you added)

-saute diced onion until translucent, add garlic and diced peppers and saute for another 5 minutes. You can go further, but they get a lot hotter.

-combine everything in a pot, add the soup stock last. I added this because the chili was super super thick and I wanted to have it crock potting all night and I didn't want the chili to dry out, it's your call.

-heat up all of said ingredients in said pot and ENJOY!

And here is a very attractive picture of the almost empty chili pot... I really need to work on this picture taking thing.

Later this week... white kidney bean cookies!!!!

Happy Valentines Day,

-Kirsten

Also just for fun....