Smoked Salmon and Apple Macaroni Salad

One of the best things about living in Seattle is the availability of amazing seafood. There is a booth at my local
farmers market where they always hand out samples of the most amazing smoked salmon I've ever tasted. This weekend, I decided that I would treat myself to some even though it's more expensive than I can usually spend.

Although I could quite happily eat it without anything else, I decided to whip something together with what I had in the kitchen. Like many of my recipes, this is more of a guideline than a true recipe. I didn't measure anything, so you just have to go with what tastes good.

Smoked Salmon and Apple Macaroni Salad

Elbow macaroni (I used gluten free quinoa pasta, but any will do)
Broccoli cut into bite-sized pieces
Smoked salmon cut into biteXsized pieces
Fuji (or any other variety of crisp apple that you like) apple sliced thinly and tossed in a small amount of lime juice to prevent browning
Olive oil (I recommend using a high quality one because it will greatly influence the flavor)
Balsamic vinegar (I used some that was infused with hot peppers and garlic)
Salt
Pepper
Dried basil

Cook the pasta according to the directions on the package. While boiling the pasta, you can steam the broccoli in the same pot if you have a steamer tray. Only steam the broccoli until it's bright green, then remove from heat to avoid over cooking. Drain pasta
In a large bowl, combine olive oil (you want enough to lightly coat everything, but not so much that your pasta is swimming in oil), salt, pepper, and basil to taste. You'll also want to add just a splash of balsamic vinegar.
Combine all other ingredients and toss until everything is lightly coated. Taste the pasta to make sure it's properly seasoned. Be aware that the smoked salmon will make everything a little saltier, so don't over-salt the pasta.
When it is seasoned the way you want it, refrigerate and eat chilled.

This recipe was so yummy that I ate every bite even though it was intended for 2 meals. The apple and salmon went together really well, plus the apples added a nice, crisp texture. I still have a lot of salmon left, so I will be making this again in the next couple of days.

Coconut and Cashew Bars

I'm on spring break after the most challenging quarter I've ever experienced (which is why I wasn't posting much). For a good portion of the quarter, I wasn't cooking much. I just had too much to do. Today I spent some time in the kitchen, and it was wonderful.

My roommate recently introduced me to Lara bars. They're quite tasty, made from only a few ingredients, and they're inexpensive, but none of their ingredients are organic. Because their ingredient list was so simple, I decided to make my own using organic food, and they turned out pretty well. All of the ingredients were raw, in addition to being organic, so this recipe works for anyone on a raw food diet.

Coconut and Cashew Bars

Ingredients:
1 cup cashews
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut
At least 10 dried and pitted dates
2 Tbs almonds coarsely ground (large chunks are fine)
1 1/2 Tbs virgin coconut oil

Put all ingredients except the almonds in a food processor and grind until you have the desired consistency. You don't want to make cashew butter, but you do want things to be ground pretty finely.
Put the mixture on a piece of parchment or wax paper. It should hold together and be reminiscent of dough. If it's not holding together, add more dates and put through the food processor again.
Mix the almonds in by hand (these give the bars a nice crunch)
Shape into a rectangle or square approximately 1/2" high.
Cut into pieces the size and shape you want.
Eat and enjoy.

Optional:
Add a dash of cinnamon, hunks of dark chocolate, or any other dried fruit or nut your heart desires.

Bean and Yam Slow Cooker Chili

This quarter at school is going to be challenging. Now when I say challenging, I mean that I'm already burned out, and it's only the 2nd week. When things get stressful, I have a tendency to get lots of takeout. Not only is that expensive and unhealthy, it's boring because now that I'm gluten free, my options are seriously limited. Plus, I'm less likely to be eating organic foods if I'm going out. I have decided that I need to become friends with my slow cooker, and I need to make food in large quantities for leftovers.

My first plan was to do chili. I perused the web for a recipe that was vegetarian, tasty looking, used dried beans instead of canned, and was prepared in a slow cooker instead of on the stove. Ultimately I found nothing. Undeterred, I decided to make up my own recipe and pray for the best. I don't like to toot my own horn, but damn, it was goooooood. Plus, I have lots of leftovers!

Here it is - I actually measured things out so that I could write up a real recipe this time!

Bean and Yam Slow Cooker Chili

1 cup dry black beans that have soaked over night
1/2 cup dry adzuki beans (it is not necessary to soak these before cooking)
vegetable oil
1 large red pepper, diced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium sized tomatoes, diced
1 yam, diced (if it's not organic, peel it first)
1 6oz can tomato paste
1.5 oz dark chocolate (I used Theo 70% because it's delicious, organic, and fair trade)
1.5 tsp salt (you may want to add more - I tend to make things not very salty)
2 tsp chili powder - I used Simply Organic. It contains cloves and coriander, which really contributed to the amazing flavor of this dish.
just under 1/4 tsp cayenne (add more if you like things spicy)
1/2 a cinnamon stick
1.5 cups water
1/2 cup beer - I used Bards gluten free beer. You could probably use any beer you want. Stout is supposed to be amazing in chili.
1 T rice vinegar
~2 inch square of kombu

Saute peppers, onions, garlic, and seasoning (except the cinnamon) in the vegetable oil until the onions are clear

Combine all ingredients in the slow cooker. Cook on high for 6-7 hours. If possible, check on the liquid level periodically so that it doesn't all evaporate. If needed, add a little more water.

Pull out the cinnamon stick. If there's still a big chunk of kombu, pull that out too. Mine seems to have melted into the chili, which is great because seaweed is really good for you!

Yields - several servings. I think I'll get 4-5 meals out of it if I don't share.


In order to make sure you're getting a complete protein, serve with your favorite cornbread.

Rosemary Garlic Roasted Veggies

I just signed up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and picked up my first box on Thursday. It's amazing. I have so much produce, I'm almost overwhelmed, but in a very very good way. I got a small bunch of baby chioggia beets (the kind that's beautifully striped red and white when you cut them open). One of my favorite foods ever is roasted beets, but there just weren't enough to satisfy me, so I decided to make a roasted root veggie medley.

I cut up a couple of carrots, a potato (I wish I knew what variety - I bought it from my school's garden sale and can't remember), a sweet onion, and the beets into bite size chunks. I tossed them in a bowl with garlic-infused olive oil, sea salt, a minced garlic clove, and minced rosemary from my garden. Then I put them on a foil-covered cookie sheet so that they were spread out as evenly as possible (I tried to make sure there was only one layer of veggies) and baked it for 35 minutes at 400 degrees.

Mmmm, it was so delicious. You can, of course, use different veggies, should you so desire. I've found that this recipe works best with other tubers because softer foods tend to overcook. They shrivel up, lose all their moisture, and become tough and unpleasant. Sweet potatoes, turnip, Jerusalem artichoke, and parsnips are all wonderful additions or substitutions. I also like to use purple potatoes to give it some extra color.

If using baby beets, I don't bother to peel them because the skin is tender and delicious (just make sure you wash them well), but I peel bigger beets before cooking.

Homemade Hummus

It's amazing how much time I've spent in the kitchen over the past week. I used to be the sort of person who only went to the kitchen to microwave things.

My acupuncturist told me just over a month ago that she thinks I have a gluten intolerance and needed to cut gluten out of my diet entirely. I gave myself a little time to binge on my favorite gluteny foods (and binge I did, oh my). Last Sunday, I officially started my gluten free diet. Due to my body's utter hatred of dairy, I have cut out all dairy as well - even in chocolate.

Fortunately, there are tons of gluten free (GF) resources out there, so I haven't really been hurting. The best thing about this change is that I have been forced to do more cooking than before. It's possible to get all sorts of pre-made GF foods, but they are usually absurdly expensive. Gluten has a nasty habit of sneaking into all sorts of things (like soy sauce), as does dairy, so it's important to make sure I know every single ingredient that goes into my food. The easiest way of doing that is for me to cook everything.

Hummus is a naturally GF food, and I'll be honest, I don't think they make it with gluten anywhere. Despite the fact that I could just go out to the store and pick up a tub of it, I decided to make my own. My favorite brand runs $5-6, so I figured it would be a fun experiment, and it would save me some money. It turned out amazingly well. In fact, I think it's the most delicious hummus I've ever tasted.

Hummus

1 c dried garbanzo beans (and 1 square Kombu)
1 Tbs tahini (see below for homemade tahini instructions)
1 clove garlic, chopped
lemon juice to taste
salt to taste
olive oil

Soak garbanzo beans overnight
drain beans and cover with fresh water, throw kombu into the pot
Bring to a boil
Reduce to a simmer, and simmer for 30 min - 2 hours until beans are soft
drain beans saving liquid
let cool
put in food processor with a small amount of olive oil, and all other ingredients, and blend
If the mixture is dry, add reserved liquid until it's as moist as you want
If you want a creamier mixture, add olive oil
Blend until desired texture

Seriously, it's super easy. You can add whatever add-ins you want.


Home Made Tahini

Sesame seeds
olive oil (1/4 cup per 1 cup of seeds)

Preheat oven to 350
Put seeds in oven safe container, and put in oven for 5-10 minutes. Mix frequently. Don't let them brown.
Let cool
Put in food processor with oil
Process until desired consistency. I like it to be pretty liquidy, so I processed the heck out of it.

Beans Beans the Magical Fruit...

Beans are wonderful and high in protein, which is great when you don't eat a lot of animal products. It's well known, however, that eating beans will make you bloated and gassy, and let's face it, that's no fun. Not only is it uncomfortable, it makes people less inclined to hang out with you when you're the person who's always farting.

Beans create gas because they contain sugars that our bodies can't break down and are too big to be absorbed in the small intestine. When they get to the large intestine, the bacteria that live there eat it up, creating gas in the process.

Fortunately, mother nature thinks of everything, and there is a 100% natural solution to dealing with the problem.

When you're cooking your beans (make sure you soak dry beans over night, or it will take forever for them to cook), add a 2 inch square of kombu (also spelled konbu). It's a seaweed that you can buy in dried form from natural food stores, Asian markets, or in the Asian food section of your grocery store (if it has one). It doesn't do a whole lot to the flavor of the beans, but it does break down the sugars into smaller, digestible chunks, leaving nothing for the bacteria to munch on. When you're through cooking, just remove the kombu, and you're good to go.

Black Beans and Rice with Kale

I have a confession to make: I don't like leafy greens. When needed, I can choke down some spinach salad or other green, but I won't enjoy it. It's hard to admit this to people who are health conscious. My friends and classmates talk about greens like they're the second coming, and when I say I don't like them, they react like I've uttered the most heinous blasphemy. Unfortunately, greens are extremely good for you and are chock full of vitamins and minerals that your body needs. At times my body even craves them, even though my brain says, "ick." So what's a girl to do when she knows she needs to eat them, but she would really rather eat sawdust?

The answer is remarkably simple: disguise them. Mix them up with other food until you can't taste them any more.

The following recipe is one of my successful attempts to get greens into my diet without offending my poor overly-sensitive taste buds.

Black Beans and Rice with Kale:


2 cups rice uncooked (I like Jasmine for this recipe, but do whatever works for you)
water to cook rice
1 can black beans (or the equivalent in soaked black beans - normally I wouldn't use the canned stuff, but I had a can sitting in my pantry, and I decided to get rid of it)
1/2 large yellow onion chopped
1 clove garlic (or more if you're so inclined) minced
1/2 a bunch of kale (I used 5 or 6 large leaves)
salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste
olive oil
approximately 1 tsp lime juice

Cook the rice according to the directions.
Steam the kale for a few minutes until bright green and wilted (my rice cooker has a steam tray, which I like using because all of the vitamins that would normally disappear into the water and get thrown out drip right into the rice)
Chop the cooked kale into small pieces
In a medium sized pot, saute garlic and onion until onion is clear
Add the kale to the pot and saute for a minute or so
Add the black beans (You can add the liquid in the can if so desired. It makes the dish a little mushier, which I like)
Add salt, pepper, cayenne, and lime juice and mix
Once the beans are hot and the mixture is seasoned to your liking, take off the heat and add to the rice.
Thoroughly mix
Enjoy.

Summer Lovin'

On days like today, when it's 90 degrees and nothing is air conditioned (one of the downsides to living in Seattle is that if the weather goes below 40 or above 78, no one knows how to handle it), it's hard to remember why I love summer. I took a bite of a ripe, organic, locally farmed nectarine, and I then remembered. My first bite was like a religious experience. I said to my roommated, "Oh my god, nectarines are my favorite food in the world." He laughed because I've said that about every fruit when I tasted it for the first time this season - at least when they were local. I had a few nectarines from California earlier this summer, and while they were tasty, they had nothing on the intense, complex flavor of this one. Once again, local wins.

Quinoa Salad

My blog seems to have become an impromptu recipe book. The simple fact is that I have been cooking more lately, and I get most of my recipes off the web. I have a lot of cookbooks, but it's so much faster to type "-insert name of dish I want to cook here- recipe" into google, and then go through the available options. I can go through 20 recipes in a few minutes, scanning to see which ones have ingredients that are in my kitchen, and which ones I can adapt to fit what I have. You see, I'm currently very very broke. I'm waiting for a financial aid check to come and rescue me from my lack of funds, but until then, I'm having to be creative with the food I already have.

Although I hate not having money, being forced to cook is kind of enjoyable. I have all sorts of dried goods in my pantry that have been waiting for me to take advantage of them. Yesterday, I made a delicious quinoa salad that took advantage of the meager fresh vegetables I still have. Because quinoa is a complete protien, I didn't have to worry about the fact that I can't afford animal products right now.

Looking online, I discovered that the trick to good quinoa is to soak it for 5 minutes and rinse it before cooking. This removes bitter tasting saponins (which can apparently be used as soap, which may come in handy if you're ever stuck in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with no soap but lots of quinoa). My box of quinoa said that I should use 2 cups of water for 1 cup of dry quinoa, but recipes online indicated that after you soak, you should use 1 1/2 cups of water. They were right. I used 1 1/2 cups, and it was perfect.

So here's the recipe I used. Obviously, you can use all sorts of different veggies, nuts, and dried fruits. This isn't the sort of recipe that you go out and buy ingredients for - it's the sort of recipe you throw whatever you have into.

Susie's Odds and Ends Quinoa Salad

Cook up 1 cup of quinoa after soaking and rinsing.
Once it's cooked, let chill in the refrigerator, or if you don't feel like waiting, you can eat it warm.

Sautee onions - I used three small spring Walla Walla sweet onions
chop up some scallions (I used 2)
thinly slice carrots - I used 1 1/2 small carrots, and I shredded the remaining half

You can, of course, prepare any other veggies you have. You can use them raw or sauteed or steamed, depending on what you have and what you feel like. I think bell peppers, cucumber, zucchini, kale, and even broccoli would be delicious additions.

Mix the veggies into the quinoa

Add a handful of dried fruit. I used cranberries, but you could use raisins, dates, cherries, apricots, or whatever you want.
Add a handful of nuts (you could toast them for extra yumminess). I used cashews, but really, anything would be good.
Add some toasted sesame seeds if you happen to have a jar of toasted sesame seeds sitting in your pantry.

If you have any sitting around, throw in some leftover chicken, pork, fish or tofu or other fake meat product (I suppose you could also add beef if you were so inclined)

Dressing:
1/4 cup olive oil
the juice from half a small lemon
salt and pepper to taste (I used a small amount of salt because I prepared the quinoa with salt, and the cashews were salted, and I used a TON of pepper)
Add any other herbs or spices you feel like using, or just keep it simple.

Mix the dressing into the quinoa, and voila! You have delicious, simple, healthy quinoa salad.

Chicken Stock

I'm not particularly adventurous in the kitchen - mostly because cooking has always been somewhat intimidating to me. I am, however, making an active effort to cook more often. When you cook from scratch, you have complete control over what goes in your body, and it's the only way to guarantee that what you're eating comes from places that you're ok with.

Last night, I made chicken stock for the first time. I had eaten part of a roasted chicken from Whole Foods, and I didn't want the rest to go to waste. Now bear in mind that I don't have any of the appropriate equipment for making stock. A friend asked me if I had a stock pot, and I said, "What's that?" She looked at what I did have and suggested that I split the chicken in half and use my 2 largest pots to make the stock, so I did, which made it possible for me to make a reasonable amount.

I had no idea how foolishly simple it is to make chicken stock. Put the chicken carcus (skin and all) in the pot. Cover with cold water. Add vegetables, salt, pepper, and any herbs and spices you want, and then simmer for hours and hours. I took a trip to the farmers' market where I bought carrots, spring garlic, shallots, spring red onions, and spring Walla Walla sweet onions. (Only in Seattle are there spring onions at the end of July). The spring onions had the stems still attached, so those got thrown in the pot. I didn't use the Walla Wallas in the stock - just their stems. I want to eat the onions themselves because they are the tastiest onions in the universe. I bought cellery from the store - unfortunately, I went to QFC, which has the worst selection of produce in the world so they didn't have any organic available, but it's within walking distance of my apartment, and sometimes you have to make compromises. I also threw in some fresh rosemary from the garden.

Once I was done cooking the stock, I tasted the result, and other than not having enough salt, the stock was amazing. I added the necessary salt until it was to my liking (which is still pretty low soduim), strained the stock into gladware containers, and put them in the freezer.

I feel rediculously accomplished for having successfully made something that always intimidated me. Now that I know how simple it is, I'll be making it much more often.