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.

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....

Sore Throat Saviour

Hello,

Sorry I have been MIA for a while I went to Calgary last weekend for a house warming party. There was loads of wonderful food and I ate until I couldn't move. Right went I was seteling into an awesome food coma the Kinect was brought out for some dance competitions. BLEH, it was fun though I think the Kinect has some major awesome factors since there are no controllers involved!

Thursday morning I woke up with a killer sore throat, it felt like someone had stabed my right tonsil and then poured 95% EtOH down there to desiccate the shit out of it. I wanted some nice broth-y soup to save the day.

This recipe is stolen for Devin's mom. It was reverse engineered from a soup they had in Mexico. I like to call it spicy limey deliciousness, it helps clear the sinuses like woah.

Ingredients:

-2 Tbs of olive oil

-1 onion

-1 jalepeno pepper

-3 red hot chili peppers

-1 lime

-2 tomatoes

-6 cups of vegetable and or chicken stock

Directions:

Mince and sauté onion in olive oil until translucent. Add minced jelapeno pepper (with or without seeds depending on how hot you would like it). This time I blended the lime and tomatoes because I didn't want a chunky soup but normally you would add the chopped tomatoes and the lime juice & zest. Nowadd the soup broth and minced chili peppers let simmer for 10-20 minutes to incorporate the flavours.

Note #1: Chicken can be added for a meaty-er soup

Note #2: last time we made this is was much lime-y-er andI think this was due to the fact that the tomatoes were blended this time...

Note #3: do not add the lime rind as it will make the soup very bitter

Note #5: If you don't like spice leave out the hot chili peppers

Prep the ingredients

Sauté the onions and add jalepeno

Add the broth and all of the other fixens. Simmmerrrr and eat!

This weekend there will be Chili!! There is a Departmental chili cook off on Monday and I think I am the only vegetarian chili entered. AND hopefully some white kidney bean cookies will make an appearance too. BEANS!!!

-K

New Toy!

For Christmas I asked for a crazy blender. My dad had no idea what I was talking about so he threw some money at me. What I would normally do in such a situation it to put all of the cash into the "Die student loan die!" fund and watch it make a negligible dent. The other option here would be to buy a normal not 500$ blender, but thats no fun.

First up the Apple smoothie:

In the mix:

-1 frozen banana

-1 cup of spinach

-1/2 lime

-2 apples (with the core!)

-1 cup of ice cubes

-1/2 cup of water

Before After

I was pleased this was after a few seconds and it was so smooth. I like the texture the apple provided and I also really like the colour the spinach brings (you cannot taste it at all).

Next experiment: Larabar mimics

These bars have a really short ingredient list consisting of dates, some sort of nut and some flavour. Devin requested something fruity so I made a lime one for him and chocolate mint for me!

Ingredients:

-1/2 cup cashews

-1/2 cup almonds

-7 dates

-for the lime flavour I added the zest of 1 lime

-for the chocolate mint I added 1 Tbs of cocoa and 1/2 tsp mint extract

process the nuts until powdery, stop before it becomes nut butter.

Pit and add the dates, these remind me of The Dancing California Raisins I just want to dress them up like Mr. Potato Head and have them dance around the kitchen.

And add in your flavour!

On the left is the dough when it is done, on the right is the dough rolled into snack size balls for easy snacks on the go.

The are so tasty!

What is your favourite on the go snack?

-Kirsten

Slack week

Blog post have been very infrequent this week. I haven't done much in the kitchen since Monday! Tuesday Devin made some tortilla soup for din din.

Turns out I left my camera cord at school because I am a moron, so I will add pictures later.

My lunch for the week was pasta with "cheese" sauce and made it in my new blender! I got this recipe from another blog called Edible Perspective, she has lots of fun breakfast recipes too.

I liked the "cheese" sauce a lot, it was really thick though so nice time I might add more milk. That being said, I think in it's thick form it would make a really good dip with a hummus like texture... I think that is how I will finish it off this weekend!

Devin's soup creation was really healthy and also done in the blender.

Tortilla soup:

-3 cups of soup broth of choice

-1 tomato

-1 carrot

-1 celery stalk

-1 slice of onion

-1 clove of garlic

-1 slice of red bell pepper

-1 tsp taco seasoning

-1 tsp cayenne

-1/4 jar of black bean salsa

So I did this in my blender, to do this on the stove should work with an immersion blender or by food processing the veggies first.

So I added all of the ingredients (except the salsa) in the blender and blended until smooth and then added the salsa for some texture, I also put some wraps in the oven on 350 until crispy and sprinkled it into the soup.

Today I went to Costco and stocked up on nuts and veggies. I also picked up some farro, I have never used it but I thought it would be something fun to experiment with.

So that's that! I will add pictures on Monday probably so stay tuned!

-Kirsten

Quinoa, and VietThai goodness (two separate meals though)

Hi Everyone!

I have been awful at this 'keeping in touch through food' thing... but I am going to catch up.

A few weeks ago my mom went to a lunch with a bunch of the ladies from the neighborhood (kind of like desperate housewives, only not desperate), and they had this vegan from the local hot yoga place cook for them. It was one of those hippy "love your body and mind" sort of things, but my mom came home with an amazing recipe. I will call it quinoa sweet potato salad, due to lack of creativity on my part.

Basically, you cook Quinoa the usual way. Then you cube some sweet potatoes and parsnips and cook them (steam, or fry, or bake... whatever you want really). Then you cut up some kale, and when the parsnips/ potatoes are almost done, you add the kale. When it is all cooked, you add it with the quinoa and add salad dressing. We used creamy poppy seed dressing, because that is what we had, but I think almost anything would work. (If you are actually a vegan, make sure you use vegan dressing). The recipe was supposed to be with cole slaw dressing, but we improvised! It was delicious, colorful, and healthy! (i took a picture on my phone, but I forgot to upload it, so I will do that later)  

I decided that I am going to be the worst at sharing recipes, because everything is so hand wavy with me. My recipes will be all "add this if you want.... or don't... "

On to the Viet Thai food....

Yesterday me and a few friends went to a restaurant in China Town! it was viet-thai cuisine. I ordered the grilled chicken vermicelli bowl (but i forgot to take a picture). It was HUGEEEEEE. The entire bowl was full of noodles, lettuce, bean sprouts, and peanuts, and they gave me two full pieces of chicken (with the  bones still in). Despite the deliciousness of it, I'm not sure if I would order it again. Eating full chicken chunks with chop sticks is HARD to do.

....I just re-read this post and realized the only words I emphasized were huge and hard. oops. 

More Soon!

-Sara

BALLS!! Flying Pizza Fail

Tuesday night is wings night at an awesome restaurant here called Brewsters. They have a list of at least 30 beers that they make and their food is really good too. Since I teach Wednesday mornings I had to pass on wings this Tuesday which was le sad. To make up for such a tragedy plans were made with the roommates for tonight to make our own fantastic wings...however that has been postponed until Sunday.

To try and make up for being lead on by wings twice in one week I thought homemade pizza would be a good substitute. I bet you can see this coming too, the pizza also did not happen. I wanted to make falafel balls to put on the pizza (haha balls), so when I got home at 8 it was a bit late and just settled with the falafel.

I would not call this a traditional falafel recipe, I just kind of mixed a bunch of spices together with chick peas to try and make something wonderful. I might be biased but these were pretty sweet.

Falafel-esk Balls

-1 can of chickpeas

-1/2 onion

-2 cloves of garlic

-2 tbs olive oil

-1 tsp coriander

-1.5 tbs cumin

-2 tsp parsley

Combine chickpeas, onion, garlic and olive oil in food processor until almost smooth consistency is obtained.

Mix in spices and form balls on cooking sheet.

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, flipping once after 15 minutes, then broil for 5 minutes to form crispy exterior.

Let cool and enjoy in a wrap on pizza or to spice up a lazy salad.

The salad was dressed with apple cider vinegar, olive oil and honey with some feta sprinkled on top. Nom nom nom.

Adventures for the weekend involve wings, possibly a bread making adventure too.

Tomorrow I have a pot luck to go to but I have no idea what I am going to make yet! Any suggestions are welcome.

Cheers,

-Kirsten