Veggie Pot Pie, #1

Pies were one of the first foods I really got excited about making on my own. When I was about 5 I got the recipe for a minty chocolatey "grasshopper pie" and made it with my mom's help. Then when I went on a sugar-free diet in high school I made a lot of no-sugar-added apple pies.

But I've never quite mastered the veggie pot pie. It seems like it would be so easy, but I seem to always mess up. Most of the recipes I find for veggie pot pie have either a ton of mushrooms or tofu, and I hate mushrooms and just don't really want to eat a tofu pot pie.

Recently I've been reading a book called Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York, which states such amazing facts as "an estimated 22 million pies were consumed in New York in 1895. ... The largest pie bakery, just north of Canal Street, baked up to twenty thousand pies a day..." And then one of my good friends has gotten really into pie-making recently because she's been reading a lot of M.F.K Fisher. And then I bought some pre-made pie crusts for a party a few weeks ago, but ended up with two crusts leftover. It seemed like a good time to try my hand at a veggie pot pie, and I ended up with one that was pretty good! I'm labeling this as Veggie Pot Pie #1, because I'm going to make some different styles of veggie pot pie throughout the upcoming fall and winter and try to post about them here.

It's mostly potato, which I always appreciate. Next time I would use one sweet potato instead of two, just because this made such a huge amount of food. And I would definitely add in a thin layer of grated cheddar right under the top pie crust. I meant to do that this time, but forgot, so we just melted some cheese slices on top of our pie slices.

Here it is:

And here's the recipe as I would recommend making it:
Ingredients:
1 large sweeet potato*
1 blue potato**
1 small bunch carrots
1/2 a small yellow onion
2-3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup frozen corn kernels
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/4-1/2 cup sweet potato bisque or other creamy veggie soup
salt and pepper
1/4 cup grated cheese (we used Cotswold, but sharp cheddar would also be good)
2 store-bought pie crusts (10")

Steps:
1. Use the food processor to slice the potatoes into thin discs. Boil them until cooked through.

2. Slice carrots in the food processor. Finely chop onion and garlic.

3. Preheat oven to 425.

4. Stir all of the veggies together in a large bowl. Season well with salt and pepper.

5. Fill bottom pie crust with veggie mixture. Pour on enough soup to cover the top without overflowing. (You could also try stirring the soup into the veggie mixture before putting it into the crust. You want just enough to very lightly coat the veggies.)

6. Grate cheese and sprinkle over veggies.

7. Add top crust. Seal edges well with a fork or your fingers. Cut a few vents in the top crust.

8. Bake on the bottom shelf of the oven for 15 minutes at 425. You might want to put a cookie sheet under your pie pan in case anything bubbles over, but that didn't happen to me. Reduce heat to 350 and bake about another hour, or until pie crust is golden brown.

9. Let cool for a few minutes before slicing. Enjoy!

It doesn't make neat slices, but I think that's typical of pot pies, right? Or is it really only a pot pie if I make individual serving sized pies? I have so much to learn.


*Or yam? We always called these sweet potatoes, but they were labeled "yams" in the store - maybe it's a regional thing. The ones I used had brownish skin and orange flesh.
**You could also use a white (Russet) baking potato, but the blue makes the finished product a little less orange.

Fried Rice

So this is one of the first actual meals I remember learning to cook. Connie Lin's mom told me how to make it when I was 11 or 12 and I still make it about once a month or so, sometimes adding things I never would have thought of putting in it when I was 12. I love it. Ricky loves it. And the kids love it--unless they're just in an eating strike kind of mood. And it's EASY! I'm wondering if you could make it Paleo by using cauliflower instead of rice. Might be worth a shot. The thing about this recipe is you can play with the ingredients to make it suit you better.

1 cup white (or brown) rice, cooked

sesame oil for frying

6-10 eggs

3-6 green onions, sliced

ham sandwich meat, chopped--or turkey, or chicken (optional)

1-2 carrots, shredded

soy sauce

Other stuff to add: broccoli, sugar snap peas, snow peas, asparagus, bell pepper strips

Cook 1 cup of rice in the morning. Let it sit out to dry all day, or at least for several hours.

Put a little sesame oil in wok on medium/low heat. Scramble eggs in the wok.

Add meat, cooking until slightly brown. Stir frequently. (***If you use raw meat, you should cook this before the eggs, so as not to burn the eggs.***)

Add green onions and carrots, cooking until they are to your desired texture. I like mine less raw, more cooked. (Add other veggies here, too)

Add the rice, stirring well to mix everything together. Add soy sauce to taste. Cook, stirring frequently, for another 5-10 minutes.

Eat.

Biscuit-top Spinach Pie

I made up a recipe! I was trying to make something else, but enough stuff went wrong that I ended up with something new and miraculously delicious. I had some phyllo dough in the fridge that I wanted to use up. At first I wanted to make a zucchini pie, but Channing hinted that he would refuse to eat zucchini. So then I was going to make a spanakopita-esque thing with a little bit of added zucchini and tomato. But, when all of the fillings were combined I opened the dough and it was all moldy. I actually meant to use it a week ago, so I had moved it from freezer to fridge, but I guess it really meant it when it said "keep frozen" because it was definitely unusable. So at that point remaining options were to make a pasta bake or to use baking mix as a topping and make a spinach cobbler kind of thing. I did the biscuit-top route and it was delicious! And a lot less time consuming than spanakopita. This recipe has lots of stuff that mom and Leslie can't eat, but I wanted to post it anyway because I haven't posted anything in a long while and I liked this a lot. It also seems like the kind of thing that could be pretty successfully altered in lots of different ways.

Serves 4, or more as a side dish.

Ingredients:
~3 TBSP sesame oil for frying
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 small white onion, chopped
~1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
~1/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley
1 zucchini, sliced thin
1 bunch spinach, washed and squeezed dry if you use the kind you have to wash
3 smallish tomatoes, sliced thin
6 oz. crumbled feta cheese (I just looked it up and there is such a thing as soy feta)
2 eggs
salt and pepper to taste
~2 Cups baking mix (I used Trader Joe's Multigrain Baking Mix)
~1 Cup milk (or water/soymilk/whatever liquid you usually mix baking mix with)

1. Sautee garlic, onion, and zucchini in sesame oil in a large pan over med-high heat until zucchini starts to brown. Stir in dill and parsley.

2. Add in spinach and cook for another few minutes until wilted and remove from heat. You can add spinach in batches if it won't all fit at first.

3. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs and stir in feta. Add this mixture and tomatoes to spinach and stir until well combined. Salt and pepper to taste.

4. Preheat oven to 350. (I do this close to the end because my oven is fast.) Lightly oil a 9x13 baking dish and pour in the spinach mixture.

6. Mix the baking mix and milk to make a fairly thin mix (a little bit thicker than pancake batter) and pour this over the spinach mixture. I eyeballed the amount of topping, and kept adding a little more of each until I had what looked like enough to make a thin layer over the whole pan.

7. Bake for about 35 minutes, until biscuit topping is golden brown.

Tzatziki Sauce

Wow, it's been a while since we've had any posts! I've been trying to find time to come post some things but life has been pretty hectic. Anywho, I've really been missing cheese on my sandwiches lately and have found that if I add something different I don't miss it as much. Common sense, I know, but for not having much time to make lunch and actually eat it, finding things that are quick and easy is key. The other day I came across this blog (www.100daysofrealfood.com) with this recipe for Tzatziki Sauce. They said it could be used as a ranch dressing substitute. I'm normally not huge on ranch or on cucumbers, a main ingredient, but figured I'd give it a try since Ricky likes both those things and Nadia is always wanting his ranch. It is GOOD! I've been making wraps with this, turkey, and lettuce all week.



Tzatziki Sauce

1 1/2 cups plain yogurt (whole milk variety works best)

1/2 large cucumber, grated with cheese grater

1 garlic clove, minced

1 tablespoon dill, finely chopped (or 1 teaspoon dried dill)

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

Mix all ingredients together. Can be eaten immediately, but is better if you let it sit together in the fridge for a few hours/overnight.

The only thing I did differently was use Silk soy yogurt. I made it 4-5 days ago and it's still really good and hasn't gotten watery or anything. I just give it a quick stir before using it in case there's any separation going on.

Shrimp with Mango salsa OMG this is FABULOUS!! John even liked it and said I could fix it anytime :) I got the recipie from CrossfitanaerobicInc (kids-I can't figure out how to put the link on here so I don't have to type this all out. lessons please)
Here it is typed out:

2 lemons
2 limes1 bunch cilantro
2 ripe mangos
1 red onion
1 jalapeno
1 small red bell pepper
2.5 lbs shrimp shelled and deveined (I'm lazy too, Les, and used the pre-cooked ready to go)
black pepper
cayenne pepper
Extra Virgin olive oil
Garlic
Nutmeg
dried oregano
paprika
sea salt

Preheat oven to 400
Zest the lemons and squeeze lemon juice through fingers into bowl.
Zest the limes and ditto
Peel and mince 3 cloves of garlic
Rinse cilantro and pat dry. Pluck 3/4 cup leaves
Peel and dice mangos and put in bowl.
Remove seeds/pith from red pepper and dace. Add to mango.
Peel and mince the red onion-add to mango bowl.
Rinse and trim jalepeno(remove seeds for no spicy--leave them in for spicy)Mince and add to mango bowl

Start cooking:
Whick together lemon juice, 2 1/2 Tbs olive oil, lemon zest, gar;lic, 2 Tbls oregano, 2 Tbs paprika, 1/2 tsp cayenne, 2 tsp nutmeg, 2 tsp black pepper and season with salt to taste. Add shrimp and mix WELL.

Line sheet pan with parchment and lay shrimp on it in a single layer. Put shrimp in oven and bake till shrimp are pink and curled 5-8 minutes

While shrimp are baking, mince 3/4 cup cilantro leaves

MAKE SALSA--Add 2/3 cup minced cilantro and lime zest to mango(and red onion, red bell pepper and jalapeno) and mix. Drizzle lime juice all over and toss toss toss. Transfer salsa to a serving bowl.

When shrimp are done, transfer to serving dish and sprinkle with remaining cilantro.

Piña colada shrimp stir-fry

Last night could have been easier. Really, it could have! But dinner could not have been much easier than it was. Even after I made it WAY more complicated that it started out. I WAS going to make Garlic Chili Shrimp-where you basically sauté the garlic, toss in the shrimp, then season with a little salt, cayenne pepper, and lime. Then I thought I'd toss in a bag of frozen stir-fry veggies (the asparagus stir-fry that Wal-Mart carries is delicious), some frozen red bell pepper strips, a can of pineapple, and some coconut milk. And this is what I came up with. I served it with brown rice that I had leftover from the night before.

~1 pound shrimp (I used the precooked kind because I'm lazy and I'm terrified of undercooking seafood)
1 bag (maybe a pound?) frozen stir-fry veggies, thawed (Or not, if you're in a hurry...)
1 red bell pepper, cut into strips
1 20 oz (I think) can crushed pineapple, drained
1 13.6 oz can coconut milk
minced garlic, cayenne pepper (crushed or powder, whichever you prefer), salt, olive oil

Put a little olive oil in pan and sauté garlic lightly, for about a minute. Add veggies, pineapple, and shrimp, mixing everything together to keep the garlic from burning. When everything has heated through, about 5 minutes, drain excess liquid. Add coconut milk and heat through again. Season to taste with salt and cayenne pepper.

I'm guessing this would be really good with some lime, but (hold on to your chairs--this will be a shock) we were out. Ricky put a little soy sauce in his and said that was pretty good, too. He also said it would be excellent without the shrimp, in case I ever wanted to make it that way. I'll try to remember to get a picture tonight when I eat the leftovers. Anyway, I wanted to post this because mom is always talking about how good the coconut shrimp at that Chinese place is and how she can never find a good coconut shrimp recipe. I'm sure it's not exactly the same, but maybe it will help satisfy the craving.

Ice cream!!!

So, by request, I will share my ice cream recipe. Honestly it's kind of cheating because I just reworked the recipe that came in the instruction book for my ice cream maker, but it's still delicious. And it's SOOOOOOOO much cheaper than buying the specialty dairy free ice cream at the store. Well, unless you make some ungodly amount of it like I did when I first got the machine. It's a bad idea to mix a pregnant lady, an ice cream machine (a new one, at that!), and a challenge. I'm just sayin'. I'll just put the basic vanilla recipe here, but you can add pretty much anything you like to it. My favorite so far is chocolate covered cherry ice cream. Ricky's is Oreo. Nadia's is, well, whatever you put in her bowl is gone before you get the other bowls served, so I'm not sure she has one. Anyhow, the recipe:

1 cup soy or almond milk
3/4 cup granulated sugar
pinch salt
2 cups coconut milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

In a medium bowl, whisk to combine "milk", salt, and sugar until the sugar has dissolved. (I usually just put it in a leak-proof tupperware container and shake it--because Nadia can help more that way--and I put it in the fridge for a while and repeat until the sugar dissolves.) Stir in coconut milk and vanilla. Cover and refrigerate 1-2 hours. Follow instructions for your ice cream maker. Add candy, fruit, or other add-ins when ice cream has thickened--about 5 minutes until the end of the cycle.

Ok, so that's the short reworked version of what my instruction book for my Cuisinart says. I do the shaking method, then add the coconut milk and vanilla, shake more, then refrigerate. You CAN put it in the machine right away, but I have not had good luck with that. It seems to always turn out too soft. So, the chilling is an important step.

Also, a can of coconut milk (13.5 oz) is roughly only 1 and 2/3 cups, so I just top it off with the almond or soy milk that I was using instead of opening another can. You CAN use rice milk, but I have found the consistency is much lighter with it, although I don't know if that will vary by machine ( I think I used the first machine I bought with it, not this one). Both the soy and almond milks give a really good ice-creamy texture. Ricky loves it and has recently been requesting an ice cream. This is the guy who wouldn't touch most of the commercial soy ice creams I tried with a 30-foot pole.

Excellent things to add are: Oreos, fresh or thawed cut strawberries, Reese's cups, 1/2 cup crushed peppermint candies--or more if you like, chopped cherries with chocolate chips, or whatever else you can chop into small pieces and put in ice cream. Just make sure you chop things small enough that they won't get stuck too much on the paddle of the machine.

Well, I guess now I'm making ice cream tonight. I'll try to get pictures on here, but I can't seem to get them to load right now.

Not-from-a-cow Products

So, since I mentioned that there are lots of good replacements for dairy products out there, I thought I should list a few that I like to use. And easy thing to remember when shopping for non-dairy items is "vegan". Anything labelled as vegan should contain no animal products, therefore, no dairy! Yay!

These are by no means the only ones out there or the best or whatever. And not all of them are vegan, so read the labels for yourselves when you're shopping. These companies have not paid me to say this. In fact, I doubt that they will ever even read this. That being said, these products, in no particular order, are my family's favorite items:
SoyaKaas Soy Cheese (Mozzarella and Monterrey Jack are our faves. They both melt very nicely.) I just found out this contains casein, milk protein. It IS lactose free though.
Rice Dream rice milk (vanilla or original, I'm very disappointed that there isn't an organic vanilla one)
Silk vanilla (the little single serving ones fit very nicely in sippy cups for road trips)
Organic Great Value soy milk (I use it mostly for cooking and it works just fine)
Silk soy yogurt (vanilla for eating, original for cooking)
O'Soy yogurt, strawberry and peach (these are a huge hit with Nadia)
SoDelicious soy "ice cream" (one of the best soy ice creams I've tried)
Coconut Bliss "ice cream" (I had to start making my own ice cream because this one was so good I couldn't afford to keep buying it!)
Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese
Tofutti Better than Sour Cream
SoyaToo Soy Whip (like whipped cream)
Better Life Buttery Spread and Baking Sticks
Earth Balance vegan baking sticks (these are my fave)
Smart Balance Light (the one that says "vegan" on the side)
EnjoyLife semi-sweet chocolate chips (Holy monkeys, these things are AWESOME! I LOOOOOOOOVE them! I often feel the need to eat the entire bag at once. Ricky agrees that they are better than regular chocolate chips.)

Also, several of the Duncan Hines cake mixes and frostings are dairy-free (Devil's Food cake and Fluffy White and Chocolate frostings for sure). You just need to check the labels, because it's definitely not all of them. I haven't found ANY Pillsbury or Betty Crocker ones that are ok for us.

Anyway, hopefully this handy little list can help with some of the shopping needs. Maybe I'll remember I put it here next time we go visit someone so I don't have to rummage through the fridge looking for packages so I know what I buy.

Creamy Red Chard Linguine

Channing and I (mostly Channing, I just chopped) made this when we were at Leslie's house, and it was delicious! Nadia liked the noodles, and I think everyone else liked all of it. I think we used rainbow chard, but otherwise pretty much exactly followed the recipe from Post-Punk Kitchen. Post-Punk Kitchen is a really good resource for vegan recipes. It's the blog of Isa Chandra Moskowitz, who has a few cookbooks out. Veganomicon is one that I really like for general meal-cooking, and she also has several others that I haven't looked into. I try to find vegan recipes as often as possible, because I feel like it's important to not always eat things that are covered with cheese. You know, for health.

Leslie suggested that maybe this could be paleo-ok if you used spaghetti squash instead of pasta, but it does have a little bit of wine in it. Is that cavechef approved?

Applesauce

Ok, so I feel like I'm kind of cheating by posting this as a recipe, but it's good. And it requires a little prep work, and, honestly, it's the only thing I had made recently that I knew actual amounts of anything that was in it and could get a picture of the finished product. I got the "recipe" from a few friends. It's so easy the cat could make it (well, if he would pry his butt off the couch and quit whining that someone looked at him funny). The awesome thing about this, I've found, is that it's REALLY hard to mess it up. For proof, read past the recipe.

Ingredients:

10 apples (I've been using organic Gala apples)

1. Core apples and cut into eighths (not sure how necessary that is, but my corer cuts them for me, so it's one easy step and I figure they'll cook faster, so I'm all for it).

2. Place in stock pot.

3. Cook over low heat for 4-6 hours (or more) until apples get mushy when you stir them. Stir every 30 minutes or so in the beginning, until they begin to release some of their juice, so they don't stick to the bottom and burn.

4. Put contents of pot into blender or food processor and puree.

5. Eat some before the kids devour it all. It makes approximately 24 ounces. According to the little measurement line on my tupperware bowl.

The first time I did this, I used apples that we had had for weeks. Seriously, they were almost going bad. And it was SOOOOOOOOO good. It was really sweet and tasted like it had cinnamon in it and everything. Ask mom, she had some. The second time, I did not stir the apples for almost an hour and a half because I forgot they were cooking. So when I did, all the apples on the bottom were burned. Great, just wasted all those apples, right? Nope! The sauce came out really dark and had a very different flavor. I thought it kind of tasted like sweet potatoes. Ricky thought it tasted like guava candy from Guatemala. Emily had some of that batch. The third batch had no problems and was not nearly as good as the first two, but it's still good and the kids love it.

Kale and Grilled Cheese with Red Peppers

This is a fairly typical meal in our house. Except for the fact that it's being stalked from the next room by a small kitten. Usually the kitten is closer.

Anyway, it's typical because it's really easy. Here's what you need:
For the kale:
1 bunch of kale (we used dinosaur kale this time)
1 T (approximately) sesame oil or whatever oil you like for frying stuff
1 small onion or shallot

For the sandwiches:
4 slices of bread (ours is California Black Bread, but anything will work)
a few slices each of Pepper jack and Meunster cheese (or whatever kind you like, just make sure you have enough to make two thin layers on each sandwich)
1 small red bell pepper
A little butter

To make the kale, first wash it and separate the leaves from the stems. Remove any gross-looking woody parts from the bottoms of the stems and discard. Chop the stems into smallish pieces (about 1/2 - 1 inch) and roughly chop the leaves, keeping them separate. Thinly slice the onion or shallot. Heat the oil (we use sesame for frying because it splatters a lot less than olive oil) in a large saucepan. When it's medium-hot add in the stems and thinly sliced onion or shallot. Stir until slightly softened, about 3-5 minutes. Then add in the kale leaves and stir. Once the leaves shrink down a little bit, add a few tablespoons of water and cover for another 3-5 minutes until the water is cooked away. The longer kale cooks, the softer it gets, so take it off when it tastes good to you. 

The sandwiches are really easy if you've ever made grilled cheese. You just do the same thing but put a layer of thinly sliced red peppers in the middle of two layers of cheese. I always butter the outside of the sandwiches but not the part next to the cheese, because cheese is going to stick to bread no problem anyway. So just put those in the pan on medium-low heat until the cheese starts to get melty. Flip them over and they're done whenever the bottom bread is toasty and all the cheese is melted. If you don't have enough cheese they fall apart, so don't be too stingy there. You can also skip the butter and make these in the oven or toaster oven, open-face style. I cut ours double ding-dong style (four triangles) so the peppers wouldn't slide out during the eating.

And that's it!

You could easily make this dairy-free by using soy cheese and margarine in place of cheese and butter. I'm not sure how to make it paleo since I'm still not totally sure what is and isn't paleo, but maybe the kale would be ok?

Introducing Carole (the Paleo one)

I have never enjoyed cooking. Ever. In my entire life. I wasn’t allowed to “help” in the kitchen when I was a kid and basically learned that it was a place to be avoided at all costs. I eventually taught myself how to cook, but I never enjoyed it. Having picky kids
to cook for didn’t give me much encouragement to experiment, either. But we all had to eat something, so I did my best. Sometimes it meant losing wooden spoons to the blender or cutting burnt bottoms off of biscuits, but no one went hungry.

When Leslie was in college, she got an advertisement in the mail for a marathon in Ireland. I called her and asked if she wanted it. She said no, but I decided to look into it. It turned out that it was for a fundraising team that would help train you for the marathon if you met fundraising goals for the team. Anyway, months later, after training like a mad woman (I had never been a runner before, after all) I found myself in Ireland running my first marathon ever. I finished it, by the way.

Since then I’ve been running like crazy and trying to get in the best shape that I can. I have really enjoyed this new chapter in my life and want to eat foods that help me to feel my best and let my body work efficiently to maintain all the hard work I've put in over the last few years. That led me to the Paleo diet. The Paleo diet is a high animal protein, low refined/processed food diet. What that means for me is eating a lot of meat and fruits and veggies, no grains, no beans, no sugar, no dairy, and (unfortunately)no compatible meals with my daughters. Or very few anyway. It’s a huge challenge to plan a menu for any time that we are all together. Hopefully by compiling all our favorite recipes here, we will be able to find some meals that we can all sit down and enjoy together.

Luckily the girls will voluntarily consume foods other than plain white rice and boiled chicken these days.

Pink Stuff

PINK STUFF (Sweetheart Salad) Totally not Paleo but completely meat free
2 Cups Crushed pineapple
1/2 Cup sugar
1 1/2 T granulated geletin (Knox about 1 1/2 packets)
1//4 Cup cold water
2T lemon juice
2T marichino cherry juice
6 oz creme cheeze (2 small packages)
12 marichino cherries
1/2 pt Cool whip

Heat pineapple with sugar, add geletin which has been softened in 1/4 C cold water. Stir till melted. Add lemon and cherry juice and cool. Mash creme cheese--add cherries which have been chopped fine. Mix with pineapple and chill till slightly thickened. Blend Cool whip with pineapple mixture. Mold and chill.