Vegetable Chili

I told you I had some catching up to do. I recently made some vegetable chili. I got the recipe from my Penzey Spice Magazine that I get every month. This isn't the first time I've posted a recipe from that book. I'm really having some good luck with some of the recipes I'm finding in these magazines. All I did was buy a jar of Penzey spices and every month I get this magazine.

Anyways, here is the recipe. Thanks to Jordan Goldstein who's recipe got posted in the Summer 2010 Penzeys Spices Magazine.

My husband said he liked it a lot better than most meat chili's he's had.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 large celery stalks, sliced
1 medium crrot, diced
1 small red or yellow pepper, diced
1 tablespoon ground ancho chili pepper (I just used regular chili powder)
1-2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tsp oregano
1/2-1 tsp ground chipotle pepper. i used 1-2 peppers from a jar called "chipotle peppers in adobe sauce". Watch out, these are spicy.
1 large or 2 small zucchini's. I used eggplant instead
1 11oz can of corn kernels, rinsed and drained. Or kernels from 3 fresh ears of corn.
1 14 oz can of kidney or black beans, rinsed and drained. I had no corn and I used black beans.
1 14 oz can of chopped tomatoes with juice (or 3-4 large tomatoes, peeled, cored and chopped)
2-5 tablespoons of water or red wine.

In a large frying pan, heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the onion, celery, carrot, and bell pepper and saute until cooked through. sprinkle the spices on. Add the zucchini slices, corn, beans and tomatoes. Add water/wine. Cover and simmer about 20-30 minutes.

Serve with grated cheese, sour cream, or yogurt on top if you desire.

Picture didn't come out too great!!!

Garlic Scape Pesto

A few weeks ago, I had some garlic scapes from the farmers market.

My friend Trina was very nice to send me this wonderful recipe called Garlic Scape Pasta. She shared some of her tips as well. : )
I made it and mixed some of it with pasta. As I mentioned before, I love the site this recipe came from.

Note*, A little sauce goes a long way. I froze some of the sauce for later use.

I also took her recommendation and tried the brown rice pasta made from Tinkyada. My husband is watching his grain/gluten intake and these are great. There better than the whole wheat pasta's you find.


Garlic Scape Pesto recipe:


I grilled up some pork chops, cut them into pieces and added that to the dinner. Chicken will go well with it.

Bean, Kale and Flounder soup

I belong to a CSA and picked up some Kale this past week. I tried making Kale chips, but was unsuccessful. I than decided to make this. WOW I am so glad I found this. This was yummy and my husband gave it a huge! thumbs up. I broiled some flounder, broke it into pieces and added it to the entire soup.

I also halved the recipe. I only had cherry tomatoes, so I put a whole bunch of them in the food processor. I had white beans, but decided to use a can of black beans instead. I'm so glad I did. My husband loves black beans.

See original recipe for Bean soup with Kale.

Update: I made this again, since I picked up more Kale. I served it at a Beach Party luncheon that I hosted. I live on a Lake and the beach is across the street, so luckily I didn't have to carry the soup too far "LOL". My friends loved it. I didn't add the fish in this time.

Pulled Pork Sandwiches, Baked Beans and Cole Slaw

I went all out for fathers day. Had the family over and made Pulled Pork sandwiches, baked beans, and coleslaw all homemade. Served that with corn on the cob as well.

The family gave this meal a pretty big thumbs up. LOL. It is well worth posting.

I bought an 8lb boston butt from Hannaford. I made a dry rub. I rubbed it with vegetable oil and than put the dry rub on. It sat in the Refrigerator for about 8 hours. It is recommended that you let it sit over night. Put rubbed shoulder in a roaster with a rack and into the oven it went (uncovered overnight). Start time was 11pm. Total cooking time was 16 hours. The oven was on 225, however I upped it to 275 around noon time, as it was getting closer to eating time. I also loosely covered it with tin foil the last 5 hours or so. Out of the oven it came, and I shredded away. Put some of the juices from the pan on the stove and boil some of it out. Add at least one bottle of bbq sauce and heat up. Mix shredded pork into the sauce.

On fathers day it was served with onion rolls and plain rolls. Today, I decided to make a little bbq ranch sandwich. As you can see in the picture, I used lettuce leaves instead of bread. Very Yummy. I grated a little cheese on it too.


DRY RUB:

Ingredients
3/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup paprika
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup garlic powder
2 tablespoons ground black pepper
2 tablespoons ground ginger powder
2 tablespoons onion powder
2 teaspoons rosemary powder

These baked beans came out great. I got rave reviews.
I did follow the advise I read about on some other recipe sources - and continued to cook the beans for a total of 6/7 hours. I continued to add more broth or hot water as needed. I never made baked beans from scratch so it was neat seeing the process.

See recipe here: Click here!

**** If you can wait for the pork to register at 190/200 degrees at a long and low heat - the better the pulled pork is suppose to be. It will still be great shredded pork if you take it out early. I took mine out at at 175. Oven times vary based on different conditions. Estimated time frame would be between 10 and 18 hours.

I got a lot of reviews about the cole slaw too. Click HERE for recipe I used.

A HUGE thanks goes out to discusscooking and allrecipes. I have had a long relationship with allrecipes.com. That is the first site I started using for recipes years ago. Although I haven't used them as often as I used to - I have never been disapointed after choosing a recipe from there site. I love the review system they have. I don't think I've talked about it too much in my blog so I figured I'd give thanks on this one. I get a lot of help from people over at discuss cooking. I can't begin to explain how nice these people are and the amazing knowledge they have about food and cooking. They helped me through a few questions I had about making the fathers day meal.

Mediterranean Meatloaf

This meatloaf recipe is awesome. I really!! enjoyed this tonight. My last few meatloaf attempts have been a little bla. I like to call this Stuffed Mediterranean matloaf.

I did make this once before and remember enjoying it. Of course today I had to experiment and make one change. I added about 2/3 cup of oatbran. The original recipe actually doesn't call for any kind of breadcrumbs or oatbran etc. Personally, I think that is great, especially if your cutting down or not eating grains. I didn't quite have a cup of mushrooms - so I thought it was best to add the oatbran so that it stayed together.

I only used ground turkey for the loaf I made today. For my fillings I peeled some egg plant and threw that in the food processor. To the food processor I also added, a few baby carrots, a boiled egg, and some spanish olives. You can see from the original recipe, you can do what you want for the fillings.

I also put some BBQ sauce on the top before cooking. I'm thinking next time - I might try adding a little bacon and maybe even some cubed cheddar cheese into the mix. Although, more calories when those items are added.

I didn't have 2 lbs of meat - I think I had a little over 1 1/2 lbs. Because of this I only ended up using one egg and less sun-dried tomatoes. I don't think more or less of something in this recipe is that big of a deal.

Once again, Galya has a winner recipe!!! Here is the link to the recipe:

RECIPE HERE

Homemade Turkey/Chicken Pot Pie

Below you will read about a nice homemade Turkey/Chicken Pot Pie. Also, below is a very quick recipe for a good, easy and not so homemade Turkey/Chicken Pot Pie.

My mother in law gave me a book called Best Recipes from Time-Life Books. There was a recipe called Vermont Chicken Pie. Instead of pie crusts, you just place homemade biscuits on top. There were instructions on poaching a whole chicken, but I didn't follow that portion of the recipe. Instead, I had left overs from a turkey I roasted not too long ago. We froze some of the drippings and the left-over turkey for a few weeks. Eventually, I defrosted everything and used both the turkey and the drippings for the Turkey Pot Pie. Biscuit Recipe also included below!. I have to admit, hubby and I are trying to cut down on grains, so I probably should of left the biscuits out. I would make this in a heart beat with out the biscuits or crust.

Assuming you have fat from the bird, the recipe actually states to drop the reserved chicken fat into a heavy 10 to 12 inch skillet, add 2 tablespoons water, and cook over moderate heat, stirring frequently. When the bits render all there fat, remove the residue with a slotted spoon and discard it. This was another STEP I didn't do, since I never saved the reserved chicken fat. I just added olive oil to the pan and a little of the fat that rises to the top from the drippings we saved. The rest of the instructions are taking exactly from the recipe in the book.

To this 2 tablespoons of butter is added and melted over moderate heat. When foam subsides, stir in 6 tablespoons of flour and mix to a smooth paste with a whisk.

Pour in 2 1/2 cups of turkey or chicken stock, stir constantly - until it comes to a boil. You can use chicken broth from the can of course if you don't have stock. Reduce heat to low and cook for 5 minutes. Salt and Pepper it.

Mix in 1 inch turkey or chicken pieces. I also added frozen peas and corn. Pour all into a baking dish.

The original Vermont Chicken Pie recipe is ONLY the meat. I think it's better to add things though. You could add anything, potatoes, carrots etc. However, since the pie is only cooked in the oven for 1/2 hour, you might want to pre cook your carrots and potatoes. One idea is to saute carrots, potatoes, celery, onions etc. on the stove and add that to the mixture.

BISCUITS:
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt. sift all three ingredients into a large chilled bowl.

Add 2 tablespoons of butter, cut into bits and 2 tablespoons of lard, cut into bits. I used crisco instead of lard. With your finger tips, rub the flour mixture and fat together until they look like flakes of coarse meal.

Pour in 1/2 cup cold milk and beat with a wooden spoon until the dough is smooth and can be gathered into a fairly dry, compact ball. If the dough is moist and sticky - add flour one tablespoon at a time.

roll dough, cut dough into 2 inch rounds. You can use the bottom of a glass to make the rounds if you want.

Brush tops with butter. Place them all on top of the chicken pot pie mixture. Bake for 25 minutes 400 degrees.

It was very yummy. I used individual crocks.

If your looking for a VERY easy and yummy pot pie recipe - this is great. It's not exactly homemade though. Take 2 cups of cooked chicken, 1 can of cream of chicken soup, 1/2 cup of frozen veggies and 1/2 cup of milk. Mix all together and pour into pre-made pie crusts. Cook until done. Not exactly homemade - but I have to admit, it's always a winner in my house.

Lamb Meatball, Orach and Cashew soup

I haven't updated my blog in awhile. I have either been making recipes that are already located on my blog or just throwing stuff together. Sometimes with the kids, it's easier for me to throw together a quick salad, throw some steaks or burgers on the grill etc. And since I went off my 'eating healthy' lifestyle for awhile, eating out became a bit more frequent.

Today I decided to combine 2 recipes. Penzeys spice magazine had a lamb meatball recipe. I made these and put them into a soup recipe I tried for the first time. The soup is called Orach and cashew soup. I couldn't find Orach so I used spinache instead. My husband and I enjoyed this meal. The soup recipe comes from Galya. You have probably noticed a lot of recipes on my blog come from her. She just has this wonderful way of preparing and cooking healthy, sophisticated foods and at the same time minimal list of ingredients, easy preparation and minimal cooking time.

Click here to see recipe for soup:

The Lamb Meatballs were pretty easy. Here are the steps.

1. 1 lb ground lamb
2. 1 tsp of spearmint or 1-2 TB fresh spearmint. I could only find mint so I used that instead.
3. 1 tsp of lamb seasoning
4. some pepper
5. 1 TB fresh minced parsley.

Combine all ingredients and mix well. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours to let flavors meld together.

Preheat oven to 375
Heat some oil in a pan.
Form small balls from your mixture and brown on all sides. (total time 5-8 minutes).
Place on Cookie sheet and cook in oven for 10-15 minutes.

You can even make a dipping sauce for the lamb meatballs if you don't put them into a soup like I did. Just chop up 1/4 of a cucumber and mix that with 4oz of plain yogurt or sourcream. Add some fresh parley into the mix when ready to serve.