{yummy avocado pasta}

I found this idea on Pinterest a few weeks ago and adapted it a bit.

It is sooooo good, especially if you love avocados like Thomas and I do.

Recipe:

1 and 1/2 or 2 medium/large avocados

1 lemon, juiced (and zest for garnish)

1-3 garlic cloves (depending on how garlicky you like it)

Salt, to taste

A handful of fresh basil leaves

1 - 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

6-8 oz of pasta, cooked (I used whole-wheat capellini)

NOTE: keep the avocado pits!

Instructions:

First, put water on to cook the pasta (everyone knows how to cook pasta, right?).

While that is happening, put the rest of the ingredients (except the black pepper and lemon zest) into a blender/food processor and and blend until smooth and creamy.

When the pasta is done, thoroughly drain it and then stir in the avocado sauce... top with freshly ground pepper and lemon zest... and serve immediately.

NOTE: This pasta does NOT reheat well because of the avocado, BUT if you store the leftovers WITH the avocado pits in a sealed container in the fridge, it will taste good COLD the next day.

Thomas and I like to eat it with portabella mushrooms.

I saute them in a little bit of oil (and salt and pepper) until the mushroom juices start coming out, then I pour in some red wine and continue cooking until the liquids are mostly evaporated.

And then, we eat :)

Also, there is another Congdon reunion post coming, I promise... there are just SO many pictures to sort through!

Cinco de Mayo {veggie fajitas & margaritas}

For all the non-Americans who may read this blog, Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of Mexican-American heritage and culture recognized nationwide in the U.S.

It's a pretty big thing here in Texas, being so close to Mexico.

So I made veggie fajitas (that's what I'm calling them, anyways) for dinner last night, and they turned out well.

And they're very easy to make.

Ingredients:

Two yellow summer squash & two zucchini, halved lengthwise and sliced.

One small onion, julienned.

Several (4-6) garlic cloves, minced.

One jalapeno pepper, de-seeded and sliced.

One 15-oz can black beans, drained and rinsed.

Juice of one lime.

Fajita (or taco) seasoning (preferably one that is a pure spice mix, with no preservatives or additives like MSG)... to taste (I used 2-3 tsp, but the one I use is fairly strong).

Chipotle chili powder, 1/4 to 1/2 tsp.

Salt, to taste.

Directions:

Saute vegetables (onions, garlic, yellow summer squash, zucchini, jalapeno pepper) until they begin to soften.

Add fajita/taco seasoning.

Add chipotle chili pepper.

Squeeze in lime juice.

Add black beans, simmer everything together for a while for the flavors to mix.

And serve [ on freshly made tortillas from Central Market :) ]

With sides like fresh salsa and guacamole.

And don't forget the margarita!

Tequila + margarita mix + lots of ice, all blended up.

Margarita in a wine glass with a bendy straw... classy, haha.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, for yesterday!

:)

{adventures in pasta}

I have this unofficial rule in my mind that I can cook one "unhealthy" meal a week.

Last weekend that meal was macaroni & cheese... the ultimate comfort food... full of carbohydrates and dairy.

So I went all out with this mac 'n cheese...
I made a roux with butter and flour, adding milk slowly until I had a white sauce.
I had some leftover vintage English cheddar, and some gorgonzola, so I threw those in with some regular cheddar cheese and monterey jack cheese. I also added about 1/2 a cup of white wine to deepen the flavor. I seasoned it with some mustard powder, salt and freshly ground pepper.
I mixed the cheese sauce in with the pasta shells and put it in a casserole dish, sliced some tomatoes on top of it and sprinkled some more cheese over the whole thing.
I put it in the oven for 15 minutes to heat through, and then browned the top under the broiler for about a minute.

And it was delicious in all its cheesy glory.

I really like pasta, so I've been looking for healthier ways to cook it [in my last post, I discovered a really good pasta substitute]. Earlier this week I found this recipe for non-dairy fettuccini alfredo with broccoli and sautéed portabello mushrooms and I tried it last night. It turned out to be so good.
The white alfredo sauce is made with a base of pureed cauliflower instead of the usual [delicious but incredibly unhealthy] butter & flour roux with cream, parmesan cheese and cream cheese. It sounds weird, but once you add the basil, oregano, garlic, cayenne pepper, nutmeg and nutritional yeast... the pureed cauliflower sauce tastes really good.
The fettuccini noodles and the broccoli are cooked together and drained, then tossed in the cauliflower sauce, and topped with portabello mushrooms that were sautéed with red wine. Incidentally that's the only part of the recipe that I really did differently.. I used red wine instead of white wine for the mushrooms for a more robust flavor.

Everything just went together so well... the lighter flavors of the pasta, broccoli, and cauliflower alfredo sauce with the deeper flavor mushrooms in red wine sauce.

[And sure, the pasta is basically carbohydrates, but once you cut out the butter, cream, parmesan, and cream cheese that go into a normal fettuccini alfredo sauce... you're left with a far healthier meal.]

{spaghetti squash primavera}

I made spaghetti squash primavera for dinner last night.
Spaghetti squash is such a fun vegetable.

It looks quite normal on the outside, and when it's uncooked and cut in half.

But after you bake it in the oven for an hour...

It turns into this.

It comes right out of the skin and looks just like strands of spaghetti!

So cool.

The primavera sauce was easy.
Onion, garlic, zucchini, yellow squash, orange bell pepper.

Diced/crushed tomatoes.

And the first harvest form my little garden.
Basil and oregano.

Spaghetti squash primavera.
[I got the idea for it here, but changed a few things]
It was very good... and much healthier than pasta.

[Oh, and tonight I made Ethiopian lentil stew.]

[These are some of the spices that go into it... there are 12 in all]

It was really good.

Menu Monday

Thai food has been my main squeeze for the past week. I can't get enough of it. I made this Thai vegetable-tofu stir fry with red curry sauce on Monday, and it was really good.

First, the chopping of the veggies.

Then, the saute-ing of the tofu cubes with some sliced onion & chopped garlic & ginger.

(In my fabulous new wok that was a birthday present from the hubby).

When the tofu cubes were golden brown, I threw in a can of coconut milk and some Thai red curry powder... probably 2-3 tablespoons.

After that was all mixed together, in went the vegetables that take a bit longer to cook (carrots, green beans, orange bell pepper, broccoli, the white part of the baby bok choy). A bit later, I put in the mushrooms.

When everything was cooked, I put in the chopped basil leaves and the green leafy part of the bok choy until they were gently wilted.

All ready to eat.

Served it up with some brown rice. I love brown rice, but I think Thai curries actually taste better with white jasmine rice. I just didn't have any white rice in the house.

Thomas liked it. Except for the orange bell peppers, of course. But I was happy to eat those for him.

Random postscript: These chocolate covered gummy bears made my week. At first I was like, ewww, chocolate covered gummy bears, gross. But then I tried one, and they are kind of awesome.

Menu Monday...

... is back after a long hiatus. Because I made an awesome dinner, and it happened to be on a Monday.

It's rainy and cold [relatively cold, I mean... this is Dallas we're talking about] at the moment, so I thought soup sounded wonderful. I rummaged through the fridge and pulled out a bunch of vegetables, and picked up two small pagnotta loaves while I was grocery shopping.

The vegetables... onion, cauliflower, zucchini (courgettes for you fellow non-Americans), a tomato, and an orange bell pepper (shhh, don't tell Thomas). I threw them all in the pot with some vegetable broth and chopped garlic, oregano,  basil, and fresh ground black pepper, and let it cook until all the veggies were soft.

Then I pureed the soup in my blender, so Thomas would have no idea that he was eating orange bell pepper. Muahahahaha.

While the soup was simmering, I put the two pagnotta loaves in the oven to warm them up and give them a nice crusty outside.

When the loaves were nice and hot, I took them out and cut the top off of one and hollowed it out [saving the pulled-out bread to eat another time]. The original plan was to hollow out both of them so we would each have a bread bowl filled with soup for dinner, but I realized there was no way I could eat a whole one by myself.

I filled the loaf up with the pureed vegetable soup, added a little spring of cilantro, and we shared it for dinner. And we were both stuffed. And Thomas gave it two thumbs up, having no clue that he was eating orange bell pepper.

And we will share the other pagnotta loaf with soup for dinner tomorrow night :)

{pumpkin pie muffins}

This morning I woke up and thought "I want muffins".

So I made muffins.

I looked through a few different recipes and kind of invented these:

They have pumpkin, diced apples, and grated zucchini in them. And agave nectar and honey. And cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and vanilla extract. And they taste like a pumpkin pie. And they are really good.

I still need to work on the recipe a little... they are more like a pie on the inside than a muffin. But then, I kinda like them like that. Next time I'll change the flour ratio up a bit to make them more muffin-y and see what I think.

it's good food, people

This is for all you unbelievers :) Vegan and virtually fat-free food can be really good. I know, it surprised me too.

Ethiopian Berbere stew (lentil stew). It has an amazing deep flavor, with more than 12 different spices in it.

 [Recipe here]*

We ate it over brown rice.

Brocolli, green bean, and mushroom stir-fry... with marinated and baked tofu.

 [Recipe for tofu here]

I used low-sodium soy sauce, some orange juice, plenty of chopped ginger and garlic, and a tiny dash of sesame oil in the stir-fry. Good stuff.

Plum & peach cobbler... deeeeeeelicious. And the best thing about it? No unhealthy processed fats, oils, or dairy. It sure doesn't taste like it's virtually fat-free though. The crust has all kinds of yummy things in it - agave nectar, soy yogurt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, vanilla...

 [Recipe here]

Thomas tentatively took a little bite at first. Ten minutes later, the cobbler looked like this:

Nom nom nom.

My resident skeptic [Thomas] liked all of the above foods. The tofu was the only thing he wasn't sure about, just because of the texture. And he looooooooved that cobbler.

*Disclaimer - I didn't follow the recipes that I linked exactly... they just give you an idea. In case you care. :)

a few of my favorite things

It's all rainy and thunder-stormy here at the moment, and whenever I hear thunder I think of the Sound of Music and Julie Andrews singing "My Favorite Things". So, while I'm in the mood, I thought I'd share a few of my recent favorite things :)

1. Eat to Live 
I read this book called "Eat to Live" by Dr. Joel Fuhrman a few weeks ago, and it changed my whole view on eating. Basically, Dr. Fuhrman proves that if you eat the right things, you can reverse disease, reduce high blood pressure, lose unwanted weight, prevent heart disease, cancer, and things like arthritis and osteoporosis, and improve your overall health without relying on medications or fad-dieting. I guess this isn't a revolutionary idea, but reading through the book really convinced me to be careful what I put into my body. I used to think that I ate pretty healthily, but when I read the book I realized that I really don't.
So I've turned over a new leaf, and I'm embarking on a whole new way of cooking & eating. One thing that surprised me was the fact that animal products from things like meat and dairy are not the best way to get nutrients. Vegetables, beans, and legumes have more protein and nutrients than meat, and in a much better form for our bodies to digest and use. Things like broccoli have far more calcium than milk or cheese, and far less fat. Meat and dairy are also more likely to have things like growth hormones and processing chemicals in them.
When you cut out meat and dairy products you end up with a vegan, mostly fat-free (apart from essential un-processed fats from things like nuts and avocado) diet... so that has been my new challenge. Originally I was like "oh this is going to be terrible and tasteless"... but there are surprisingly lots of very yummy recipes out there. I just have to get used to some new ingredients... soy milk, nutritional yeast, flax seeds etc.

Here's one the first meals I made: asparagus and chickpea casserole with a crispy grated potato topping. It was yummy. I get most of my ideas from the FatFree Vegan Kitchen - Sinlessly Delicious blog, which follows all the Eat to Live guidelines.

Thomas still thinks I've gone a little crazy, but that's just because he hasn't read the book yet :). And he has liked all the food I've cooked so far. Don't worry, hubby, I'll still cook meat once in a while :) I'm not against eating meat & dairy, I just know now that it's not the healthiest way to get nutrients.

I'll be blogging about all the delicious new things I'm going to make, get excited!

* cough cough * getting off my long-winded soapbox now...

2. My new toy

We FINALLY replaced our blender. The one we used to have must have been from the 1970's, not kidding. Whenever I used it, it smelled like burning rubber. It kicked the bucket sometime earlier this year and I've been begging for a new one ever since.

Here's the shiny new one

Yay! I can make smoothies again!

Frozen raspberry and soy milk smoothie... yummy.

3. Africa necklace... and Mercy House.

Isn't it beautiful?

I bought it from The Mercy House, a new ministry that is building a maternity house in Kenya for young pregnant mothers who have nowhere to go, and would otherwise likely get an unsafe abortion. The necklace was hand-made by The Vintage Pearl (a family business that makes beautiful jewelry), who donated 50 of them to the Mercy House to sell in order to raise funds.

4. Krispy Kreme donuts

So... uhhhhh... ummmm... *ahem* about that whole vegan fat-free thing... I was grocery shopping at Central Market last night and there happens to be Krispy Kreme riiiiiiight next door, and they had this big flashing sign that said "Fresh hot donuts now!" 

Who can resist something like that, I mean, really?

So I bought a dozen. Because it was Friday. And I'm not vegan. I'm just mostly vegan. (That's probably like vegan heresy or something). And really, you gotta enjoy the good things in life once in a while, even if they shave off a month or two, right?

5. Thomas Andrew Congdon

And last but certainly not least, my favorite thing (ok, person) in the whole wide world, my wonderful, hard-working, loving, handsome husband :)

Well hey there, good lookin' :)

And I'll end with a little picture collage of our married life so far: