one man's ceiling
Sunday, April 29, 2007
days five and six
so, a little catching up on the veggie diet week.
so after the garlic soup there was the crazy-hectic thursday night where i worked, my zuska and e went to a book group and j hung out with a friend. on the menu: vegetarian chili, which didn't really taste any different than normal though it was the first time i made it in a slow cooker without meat.
the trouble with slow-cooking is that it basically works so long as you don't lift the lid. but making something that requires spices can make it a bit of a gamble if you can't make corrections until the end. granted, a chili isn't a big deal to fix at a late stage, but given that i wasn't home when the fam ate meant that i had to be rather sure of my spices in advance.
i leaned a bit heavier on the cumin and oregano and doubled up on green chilies. doubling the chilies was not planned; i bought fresh jalapenos not realizing i still had a can of chopped chilies in the cupboard. i added the canned babies to the onions at the bottom of the pot so their moisture would help steam out in the beans and mixed the fresh jalapenos with honey in a can of diced tomatoes to flavor out the sauce.
it was a thinner chili that i'd intended -- more of what that cheerleader calls a "stoup," part stew, part soup -- and totally edible. i took some on-the-verge-of-stale corn chips and crumbled them into the bowl, dumped some shredded cheese on top, then the chili. all good.
friday night being movie night usually means a lo-stress, easy comfort meal. my super nachos generally have ground meat (beef or turkey) simmered in cuban style black beans among the cheese, olives, chips, guac, sour cream and salsa. doing the beans alone kept the flavor and still the girls hadn't guessed about the week's meatless options. to be fair, it helped to not introduce super complicated new dishes that required close scrutiny, the only one being the first night's fried veggies and spanakopita which was well loved.
saturday is traditionally sauce night -- a meat sauce with pasta, or some form of meal with a sauce -- and i was all set to go all-veggie but my zuska used her veto power and so it was a traditional sauce with ground beef and sweet italian sausage. during dinner we informed the girls that this was the first meal since the previous saturday that had meat. they blanched at first, almost ready to insist it wasn't true, but then we outlined the week for them.
today, back to our regular omnivorous ways, we did a mango chicken with a quick stir-fry of garlic green beans. the mango chicken recipe comes from coconut & lime, a great food blog that does the sort of things i wish i could do; namely, invent recipes on a consistent basis. i should be (and am) grateful that i can do as much as i do in the kitchen, and don't need a secondary career in the culinary arts. the recipe is easy, and if you've got mangoes in season (they're just starting here) i would strongly suggest giving this a whirl. i think the only thing i would have liked more would have been a thai iced tea to go with it.
so, a little catching up on the veggie diet week.so after the garlic soup there was the crazy-hectic thursday night where i worked, my zuska and e went to a book group and j hung out with a friend. on the menu: vegetarian chili, which didn't really taste any different than normal though it was the first time i made it in a slow cooker without meat.
the trouble with slow-cooking is that it basically works so long as you don't lift the lid. but making something that requires spices can make it a bit of a gamble if you can't make corrections until the end. granted, a chili isn't a big deal to fix at a late stage, but given that i wasn't home when the fam ate meant that i had to be rather sure of my spices in advance.
i leaned a bit heavier on the cumin and oregano and doubled up on green chilies. doubling the chilies was not planned; i bought fresh jalapenos not realizing i still had a can of chopped chilies in the cupboard. i added the canned babies to the onions at the bottom of the pot so their moisture would help steam out in the beans and mixed the fresh jalapenos with honey in a can of diced tomatoes to flavor out the sauce.
it was a thinner chili that i'd intended -- more of what that cheerleader calls a "stoup," part stew, part soup -- and totally edible. i took some on-the-verge-of-stale corn chips and crumbled them into the bowl, dumped some shredded cheese on top, then the chili. all good.
friday night being movie night usually means a lo-stress, easy comfort meal. my super nachos generally have ground meat (beef or turkey) simmered in cuban style black beans among the cheese, olives, chips, guac, sour cream and salsa. doing the beans alone kept the flavor and still the girls hadn't guessed about the week's meatless options. to be fair, it helped to not introduce super complicated new dishes that required close scrutiny, the only one being the first night's fried veggies and spanakopita which was well loved.
saturday is traditionally sauce night -- a meat sauce with pasta, or some form of meal with a sauce -- and i was all set to go all-veggie but my zuska used her veto power and so it was a traditional sauce with ground beef and sweet italian sausage. during dinner we informed the girls that this was the first meal since the previous saturday that had meat. they blanched at first, almost ready to insist it wasn't true, but then we outlined the week for them.
today, back to our regular omnivorous ways, we did a mango chicken with a quick stir-fry of garlic green beans. the mango chicken recipe comes from coconut & lime, a great food blog that does the sort of things i wish i could do; namely, invent recipes on a consistent basis. i should be (and am) grateful that i can do as much as i do in the kitchen, and don't need a secondary career in the culinary arts. the recipe is easy, and if you've got mangoes in season (they're just starting here) i would strongly suggest giving this a whirl. i think the only thing i would have liked more would have been a thai iced tea to go with it.
Labels: chicken, garlic, green beans, jalapeno, mango, omnivore, rachel ray, vegetarian
¶ Sunday, April 29, 2007 1 comments
Sunday, April 22, 2007
the experiment and the menu
there are all kinds of issues in the house right now. someone is dieting and exercising, and someone should be doing likewise. someone isn't even officially a tween and beginning to show signs of eating us out of house and home. someone has had an aversion to red meat for a few years now, though just the other night ate three adult portions of ribs, and could easily becomes a vegan within a few years. and someone has gas.
health and diet considerations taken to account, i threw out the idea that we go meatless for the week. i thought i could probably pull it off in a way that wouldn't seem like such a harsh shift in our eating. i'd also like to think that in a very small way it's helping the planet, but i can't really say that was a motivating factor.
so when my zuska and i discussed this we also decided to keep the girls out of the loop, to see how long it would take them to figure it out. if i went whole hog (no pun intended) and went vegan they'd know in a heartbeat, eggs and cheese just being too hard to remove from the house without severe problems with proteins and omegas. if the girls would only eat pbj! but with starches and flours already limited to next-to-nothing the lacto-ovo option needed to be exercised.
despite a lapse early in the day -- eggs with sausage for brunch, i just totally forgot -- the rest of the day went smooth. for dinner i fried some more zucchini with a cucumber yogurt dip, adding onions and eggplant to the mix, with a main dish of spanakopita. despite being a very rachel ray recipe, i loved the spanakopita because instead of a giant pan of feta and spinach pie they are personal sized little logs, like greek egg rolls. baked. okay, maybe nothing like egg rolls, but very nice.
just to be clear, this lack of meat is really only being enforced on my zuska and i. breakfasts won't be affected as we'll all be on our smoothie routines (girls will round out with bagels or mini wheats) and for lunch one takes the hot lunch at school and the other brings her trusy ham-n-cheese or hard boiled egg (or both! hungry tween alert!) and that's fine. like i said, they won't do the pbj option so whatever gets them through the day, right?
tomorrow night is a weird hybrid salad, a sort of a meatless cobb salad with some mexican whang to it. not spicy, just the combination of avocado and cheese and beets and jicama and citrus dressing. it feels a little out-on-a-limb but i'm up for it. and i don't think the girlies will figure out what's up just yet.
by tuesday they might. i'm doing a stir fry but i'm going tofu. one girl loves it and the other is going to pout because there's no beef or chicken. and that's when the dam will break. if they ask we'll tell them, and i suspect it'll all be clear before wednesday. then the only trick will be to see if they really are hankering for some meat come this time next week. we'll see how everyone fares.
there are all kinds of issues in the house right now. someone is dieting and exercising, and someone should be doing likewise. someone isn't even officially a tween and beginning to show signs of eating us out of house and home. someone has had an aversion to red meat for a few years now, though just the other night ate three adult portions of ribs, and could easily becomes a vegan within a few years. and someone has gas.health and diet considerations taken to account, i threw out the idea that we go meatless for the week. i thought i could probably pull it off in a way that wouldn't seem like such a harsh shift in our eating. i'd also like to think that in a very small way it's helping the planet, but i can't really say that was a motivating factor.
so when my zuska and i discussed this we also decided to keep the girls out of the loop, to see how long it would take them to figure it out. if i went whole hog (no pun intended) and went vegan they'd know in a heartbeat, eggs and cheese just being too hard to remove from the house without severe problems with proteins and omegas. if the girls would only eat pbj! but with starches and flours already limited to next-to-nothing the lacto-ovo option needed to be exercised.
despite a lapse early in the day -- eggs with sausage for brunch, i just totally forgot -- the rest of the day went smooth. for dinner i fried some more zucchini with a cucumber yogurt dip, adding onions and eggplant to the mix, with a main dish of spanakopita. despite being a very rachel ray recipe, i loved the spanakopita because instead of a giant pan of feta and spinach pie they are personal sized little logs, like greek egg rolls. baked. okay, maybe nothing like egg rolls, but very nice.just to be clear, this lack of meat is really only being enforced on my zuska and i. breakfasts won't be affected as we'll all be on our smoothie routines (girls will round out with bagels or mini wheats) and for lunch one takes the hot lunch at school and the other brings her trusy ham-n-cheese or hard boiled egg (or both! hungry tween alert!) and that's fine. like i said, they won't do the pbj option so whatever gets them through the day, right?
tomorrow night is a weird hybrid salad, a sort of a meatless cobb salad with some mexican whang to it. not spicy, just the combination of avocado and cheese and beets and jicama and citrus dressing. it feels a little out-on-a-limb but i'm up for it. and i don't think the girlies will figure out what's up just yet.
by tuesday they might. i'm doing a stir fry but i'm going tofu. one girl loves it and the other is going to pout because there's no beef or chicken. and that's when the dam will break. if they ask we'll tell them, and i suspect it'll all be clear before wednesday. then the only trick will be to see if they really are hankering for some meat come this time next week. we'll see how everyone fares.
Labels: feta, greek, rachel ray, spinach, vegetarian, zucchini
¶ Sunday, April 22, 2007 0 comments
