Shopping from the freezer
One of my favourite websites is Unclutterer. Whenever I need some incentive to organize, declutter, or clean, I head over there to procrastinate get some ideas. Today’s browsing yielded some good thoughts on using frozen foods, and a good tip I thought I’d share:
One of the ways you can use a freezer to help with meal planning is by vacuum sealing foods you buy in bulk. If you don’t own a product like a FoodSaver Vacuum Sealer, using freezer-safe zip-top bags and squeezing out as much air as possible can work as well. To get the air out of a zip-top bag, close the bag except for an inch at one of the corners. Submerge the exterior of the bag in water almost to the top of the bag. Let the pressure of the water release air from around your food, and then quickly close the last inch at the top of the bag. Be careful not to let any of the water into the bag and onto your food.
Simple…and eliminates the need for one whole gadget. (I’m moving in a couple months, so decluttering is my current obsession!)
I also particularly like their suggestion for shopping from the freezer before hitting the grocery store — such a simple idea really.
When BLTs grow up
Bak'n, kale, and tomato bagel
It’s official, I no longer miss bacon, because I’ve found something better.
My friend D shared her amazing fake ‘bacon’ recipe with me last week. Omg, sooooo good. I’ve been trying to take some pics, but always end up eating the entire batch before the camera gets involved, so today I made a double batch so enough would be left over for pics.
Here you see the ultimate creation — one lightly toasted Montreal bagel, several rashers of ‘bacon’, some Sheese, cherry tomatoes, and crispy kale (lightly pan fried with the bacon). This is what BLTs dream of becoming when they grow up.
Damn, now I’m hungry again.
Caffeination
It’s early April, we’ve had crocuses up for weeks, and yet today brought us snow. *horror* Mother nature is playing a late April Fools joke on us.
The fluffy flakes have me thinking wistfully of hot drinks. Hot chocolate. Mulled cider. Tea. But really, my not-so-secret vice is coffee. I love good coffee, and I’ll take it over pretty much anything else. Mmmmm, java.
Over the years I’ve tried pretty much every way of making and (I think) drinking coffee. The best cup I ever tasted was made using ‘vaccuum‘ technology — very good, but far too complicated for everyday brewing. At home I use a French press — it seems to best balance my needs for flavour and quick/easy preparation. If I can’t make a pot of coffee when I’m half asleep, what’s the point?
I drink the stuff black. Originally I started doing this to try and cut back on the amount I was drinking. That backfired — I just learned to love it that way. But I also started tweaking what went in the press. My favourite addition is ground cinnamon. A healthy couple shakes added to the grounds makes a fabulous combination — somehow richer, definitely more fragrant.
Today this staple got a new tweak in the form of — ready for it? — dried cranberries. Not a lot, maybe a tablespoon or so, but just enough to add a slightly fruity note to the coffee. Yum! It’s probably not for everyone, but I love the combination. So while it snows outside, I’ll just cozy up here with a warm cup held in my hands and think happy thoughts.
Roast vegetable salsa
One of the perks of joining a CSA is that you get to try new vegetables. This summer mine brought me my first ever ground cherries, and more recently tomatillos. I adored both, especially the way that they come in little papery husks that you peel off to find the fruit itself.
At about the same time the tomatillos arrived I also found myself with a few cobs or corn needing a tasty home, as well as some caramelized onions, eggplant, and cilantro. All together these spelled salsa. I decided to roast the veggies first to bring out the sweetness of the corn, and generally add a richness to the flavour.
Roast vegetable salsa
- 2 banana peppers
- 1 hot pepper
- 2 small purple eggplant
- 2 cobs corn
- 1 lb tomatillos
- 1/2 lb tomatoes
- 1/2 cup caramelized onions
- 1 bulb garlic
- 1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
- 1 to 2 T balsamic vinegar
- ~1/2 cup water
- oil
- salt and pepper [to taste]
- Smoked paprika, mushroom powder, or other seasonings [to taste]
To make the salsa, first roast your veggies:
- Cut the top off the bulb of garlic to expose the tops of all the cloves. Wrap the bulb in foil, drizzle with oil, then seal the foil packet. Bake at 350F for approximately 30 minutes.
- Slice the tomatoes and tomatillos fairly thickly and spread out on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. (You might need two pans to hold all the veggies.)
- Cut the peppers in half and remove the seeds, put on a pan with the tomatoes.
- Prick the eggplant all over with a fork and put it on the pan too.
- If you like, you can drizzle a bit of oil over the veggies and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
- Husk the corn and wrap both cobs in foil to form a well sealed packet. Sprinkle with a tablespoon or so of water just before sealing this up.
- Bake at 375F for around 30 min.
- Let the garlic and veggies cool. If you like, you can lightly oil the roast corn and then put it under a broiler for a few minutes to blacken it and get an even richer flavour, but watch it carefully!
Then make your salsa:
- Once cool, cut the roast eggplants in half and scrape out the middles.
- Pulse all the veggies (but not the corn!) together with the garlic, onions, cilantro, and balsamic vinegar in a food processor until just combined. Add water a little at a time until you reach a good consistency.
- De-nibble the corn. =) Add the niblets to the salsa and stir in. You want to do this after using the food processor so that you get whole niblets in your salsa.
- Taste and adjust the flavour with whatever strikes your fancy. I like the smokiness I get from adding smoked paprika, and find mushroom powder balances the acidity of the tomatoes. YMMV — experiment!
Harvest
I went to pick up the weekly bundle of vegetables from our CSA this week, only to hear sad words when I arrived. “Last week for tomatoes! Last week for eggplant and herbs.” With October comes frost, and with frost the end of the season. The squash and brussel sprouts and suchlike still have some time, but the veggies that always remind me of hot sun and long warm days are on their way out.
At home it was time to harvest my own little balcony garden. The chard and brussel sprouts and tomatoes are still out there (quite a few cherry tomatoes still hoping for a few more frost-free days), but I dug up the potatoes and picked the last few beans. The turnips yielded a few tubers, though I waited just a few days too long and their greens went all straggly before I could harvest them. The peppers did well, both hot and sweet types. There was even one huge cucumber tucked away in a corner. All in all, a tasty and satisfying yield that helped make our Mabon dinner special.
Still to do, picking the last of the beans I left out to dry, so that I can use them for seed next year. Also beheading the dead marigolds and calendula, likewise hoping for seed. And then it’ll be time to start planning next year’s garden. =)
Happy trails
Wow, it’s been a quiet few weeks. It’s my own fault really — I managed to bruise the tendons in my wrist while canoe camping, and it’s only just getting solid enough to type with. Trust me — bruised tendons are a pain in more than just the hand.
Hopefully it’ll recover quickly, because with any luck August will be all about camping. I have tentative plans for no less than three trips of varying lengths, including a solo trip in just a couple weeks time. In anticipation I’ve started looking at lightweight vegan camp foods — the kind of thing you can carry for a week without throwing out your back, and still find tasty and filling after a long day.
There are lots of backpacker meals on the market, but not all that many good vegan ones. They also tend to be pricey. Last year I invested in a Harmony House Backpacker Kit, which is basically a collection of dried beans and vegetables. These proved useful for an extended multi-person trip — we could pretend we had a fridge full of veggies at our disposal, reduced to a dozen or so little packages of the dried stuff. For solo tripping, though, where I’m carrying everything myself, I decided this wasn’t the way to go. Premade meals are more efficient — I only want to carry what I need.
So back to those prepackaged meals. A couple years ago I tried some Mary Janes Farm meals for bike camping trips. They were decent, with the exception of their instant salsa, which was exceptional. (Sadly they seem to no longer seem to sell this.) The serving sizes are not huge, but you can buy individual servings (which is great for solo trippers). The pasta dishes they offer are veg but not vegan, but the couscous dishes are a major score — all are vegan except the Northwest Garden Couscous. Similarly we can satisfy ourselves with all their ‘ethnic ‘dishes (those seem everyday to me!) except the polenta, which puts falafel and hummus and suchlike on the menu. That’s by no means all, there are soups and rice dishes and more too. Compared to other instant meal manufacturers, MJF offers quite a lot of vegan options.
This week I discovered that Harvest Foodworks also offers quite a few vegan entrees — over a half dozen, with additional variations on things like their veggie burgers. (Though why on earth do they list beef burgers on their vegetarian entree page?!) Whether you can find them in a local store is another question. Mine only had one, the Cajun Beans & Rice. A taste test surprised me. I’m used to bland meals, but these were quite tasty (if a bit salty). It was good straight out of the pan, and downright satisfying after stirring in a small packet of hot sauce scavenged from a local fast food restaurant. My only complaint is that the smallest packages contain enough for two very hearty servings, which means solo trippers will need to carefully measure and split the contents to create individual servings. Also, even after allowing the full recommended cooking and sitting time, the rice and beans were more stew-like than I’d expected. They made a yummy stew, but didn’t soak up all the extra moisture for a good hour or more (the leftovers were perfect in the morning). All told I’d certainly give them another try, especially their more unique offerings like insta-bannock, as well as powdered shortening and apple sauce. (Nifty!)
Not all the options out there are good though. Scavenging for options last fall, I found Hothuck’s Bombay Curry. Admittedly it’s meant to be ‘enhanced’ by adding some veggies or rice, but it was still a huge disappointment — tasteless, with an unpleasant texture. I actually threw mine out.
So what am I planning to pack for upcoming trips? Probably none of the above, because last night I found an even better resource — Bulk Barn. This is a Canadian chain, concentrated mostly in Ontario and along the east coast. I’m sure there are equivalents elsewhere though. Basically it’s a bulk food store, with bins and bins of baking supplies and dried fruit and nuts and beans and the like. I gave myself five minutes there last night, and walked out with pea soup, thai soup, chili, tabbouleh, and mixed grain mix. All vegan, all of the just-add-water variety. For around $10 I emerged with around 10 individual servings — definitely the cheapest option. They may not be as well-rounded nutritionally as dedicated backpacker meals, but I suspect they’ll do very well indeed after adding some dried veggies and seasonings, and maybe instant rice or quinoa. Certainly the pea soup was tasty and filling. I just combined 1/2 cup of the mix with 3T quinoa flakes, 1/2T dried chives, 1T fake bacon bits, and 1/4 tsp smoked paprika.
Camp mix: Instant pea soup
Also on the list of things to try and come up with in the next couple weeks: Instant salsa, instant congee, good granola bars, and tasty ‘energy balls’ (a yummy raw treat). Life won’t be dull. 
Radishes!
We collected the first of our CSA produce this week, and lo, there were many greens. After a hot start to spring this year our weather turned cool and very, very wet. It’s rained almost every day for weeks! This has been great for the greens but not so great for the rest of the veggies. Nonetheless, I was very excited by our first CSA haul, which included spinach, some sort of leaf lettuce, chinese cabbage, a mystery green, chard, radishes, baby green onions (they’re like particularly chubby chives), and dill. My housemate also grabbed us a pint of luscious strawberries from the farm, which were almost gone 24 hours later.
Needless to say, that many greens means salad. Strawberries mean salad too — a handful of fruit really does perk up a bowlful of greens. I was also excited to discover that you can eat radish greens. Who knew? (Probably everybody but me. ) They’re a little prickly to handle, but just fine torn up into salad. Apparently you can steam and sautee them like spinach too. To store them, this site suggests trimming them off the radishes, washing well, then storing them wrapped in paper towels or a plastic bag.
Last week I got to taste a Chinese dish that used pickled mustard greens. It was quite tasty, and today I discovered you can pickle radish greens too. You can also make a quick pickle of the radish bulbs, which I’m thinking might make a tasty sushi filling. I saw a comment online suggesting the pickles are great on pad thai. Mmmmmm. Though right now my new favourite thing to do with radishes is roast them. I got the idea from this site, and I’m forever grateful. Roasted radishes don’t have the fire of fresh radishes. In fact they turn out sort of like very juicy little white potatoes. I make mine in the toaster oven, which has become my favourite tool on hot days — I toss a single serving of asparagus or squash or fiddleheads or (now) radishes in to roast, and serve the results on salad. Makes for a yummy lunch.
But getting back to the radishes, I do mine almost the same way that Bloxham suggests. I cut a half dozen or so in half, toss or spritz them lightly with oil (garlic or spicy or sesame oil all work well), add a touch of salt and pepper, spread them out on a parchment paper covered pan, and roast for 25 minutes at 375F. Then I toss them again with a drizzle of sesame oil, another of tamari soy sauce, a coarsely chopped clove of garlic, two chopped green onions, and a couple sprinklings of raw sesame seeds. They go back into the toaster oven for five minutes, et voila, an unusual roast veg to liven things up.
One last radish-related tidbit: At the permaculture workshop I did this spring, the presenter explained that radishes are a great fast crop for gardens. You can use them to fill in empty spaces while you’re waiting for slower-growing veggies to fill out. Just sow the gaps with radish seeds, and pull them out when the bigger vegetables start needing the space. The radishes will grow quickly and keep weeds down, and give you something tasty to play with just a few weeks later.
Rabbit food
I’ve kinda had this thing against salad for a long time now. I think it comes from everyone telling me “well you can always have salad” when a restaurant menu offered little in the way of veg-friendly food. Eventually salad became a loathed thing.
But y’know I really do like veggies, and I hear salad’s full of’em. So, with spring bringing in all sorts of yummy fresh things, I’ve been making an effort to learn to love salad. Last night’s took the prize — roasted fiddleheads and asparagus with marinated tofu on fresh spring greens. My inspiration was this recipe. The marinade became the salad dressing, and suited the roast veggies very nicely. Oh yum.
To roast fiddleheads, toss them with a little oil and salt and pepper, then spread on a baking parchment-covered pan in a 400F oven (I used my toaster oven) for ~25 minutes. For asparagus, do the same thing but for only 12 minutes. Mmmmm.
Pie!
A rare alignment of the culinary planets brought me fruit, lots and lots of fruit. I had a huge bunch of rhubarb, two plump mangoes, and maybe 24 hours in which to use them up. Hmmmm, I thought, wonder what they’d taste like together?
The answer? Tasty. The sweetness of the mangoes nicely balances the tartness of the rhubarb. (Well, the mangoes plus a cup of sugar, but I digress.) I think the combination might actually work even better in a crisp, but won’t know until a similar culinary alignment brings me those ingredients again. And next time I’d make it tarter, because I like my rhubarb treats mouth-puckeringly tart…but my housemate declared this version perfect for the rest of the world. 
Rhubarb mango pie
- Pie dough for two crusts (I made a full batch of this, used half, and froze the rest for some future pie-making. There were enough trimmings to make an extra tart after making the pie.)
- 1/4 cup ground almonds
- 1 tablespoon unbleached flour
- 2 cups mango, peeled and chopped small
- 2 cups rhubarb, chopped small
- 1 cup sugar*
- 1/3 cup flour
- 1/2 T cinnamon**
To assemble:
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Prepare your pie dough. When ready, roll out half and fill a pie pan, trimming the edges.
- Line the shell with a sheet of parchment paper, and pour in enough dry beans to cover the bottom. (These will keep your crust from shrinking as it bakes.)
- Put the pie pan on a cookie sheet in case of drips, and bake until golden brown (app. 15 minutes). Remove the parchment paper and beans. Sprinkle it with the mixture of ground almonds and flour. Bake another 5 minutes.
- Let cool.
- Mix the rhubarb and mango with the remaining flour, sugar, and cinnamon.
- Pour into the cooled pie crust.
- Roll out the other half of the pie dough until big enough to cover the pie. Press the edges and cut steam vents on top.
- Bake (again on a baking sheet for drips) for 45 minutes to 1 hour…basically until golden brown on top and bubbly in the middle. I started with 30 minutes and then checked every 5 to 10, but lost count. )
* Next time I would cut the sugar to 2/3 cup, because I like my pie tart rather than sweet, but my housemate thought it was fine as is (and proved it by snagging two pieces).
** Cinnamon was okay, but mango demands something a little more exotic. Next time I’m thinking allspice.
Spuds
Lately people have been giving me vegetables. Hurray for free veggies! First my gf tried to send me home with cabbage and broccoli (she would have succeeded too, if I hadn’t forgotten to grab them on my way out the door). Then my friend K gave me an entire bag of potatoes after our workshop last weekend. And what’s a girl to do with a whole bunch of potatoes? Why, make potato soup, of course.
The soup I make is a vegan adaptation of the one I grew up with, which came from a recipe dating back to the early 1900’s. It was served in immigration halls out west. I could probably find the original recipe somewhere around the house if I went on a cleaning spree, but had more fun creating my own version instead (besides, the original was very heavy on dairy and bacon). It was a perfect cure for the cold dampness of last night. We had hail!
No photos, sorry; I’m travelling today, and currently borrowing wifi from a cafe in Toronto to write this.
