Food

Cookbook Review: The Food You Crave

January 22, 2014 by Vanessa 2 Comments

The Food You Crave from Ellie Krieger is a cookbook I’ve had for years. It was on sale at Half-Priced Books so I snagged it. I had no idea that it would become such a staple in our life. I cook at least two recipes out of it every week. This is especially a good January cookbook when we’re all trying to get on the healthy eating train.

Up until I bought this cookbook, I thought most recipes from cookbooks needed a lot of tweaking. I had used lots of Rachael Ray’s cookbooks and if I followed her recipes to the t, they usually came out bad. Not so for this book. Krieger does an amazing job constructing very solid recipes. Follow it exactly and usually it will turn out fantastic. Even the worst recipes are not bad, just bland, but I have only run across a few of those (lasanga rollups and stuffed peppers).

Even though our kids have food allergies, we’ve been able to make substitutions in her recipes without a whole lot of work. However, I haven’t tried many of the breakfasts or desserts because I just go to the Allergy Mama for that.

Where this book really shines is the sauces and the salads. I ate salad before I got this cookbook, but it was always the same buffet-type salad with iceberg lettuce and cherry tomatoes and sesame seeds. The salads in this book are amazing. The dressings, perfect. Because of this book, in the summer we eat salads as our entree most days because I don’t have to turn on the stove or oven and they are so darn tasty. Even the girls will chow down.

Also, what I appreciated about this book was the little tips she gave. For example: Did you know that when you drain and rinse canned beans it removes more than 40% of the sodium? You can do that for anything canned.

My favorites from this book:

Lemon Chicken and Orzo Soup (subbed out the eggs for cornstarch)
Cornmeal-Crusted Roasted Rataouille Tart (I have no idea how to make this dairy and egg-free, nor would I try, it is the most delicious thing I’ve ever made. No joke.)
Crab Salad on Crisp Wonton Cups
Grilled Thai Beef Salad (the girls eat this like it’s pizza)
Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing (we cheat and use a little more bacon. Good winter salad.)
All Day Breakfast Salad (Mine and B’s fav, better in the summer with good tomatoes)
Salmon Cakes with Ginger-Sesame Sauce (I could drink this sauce – her lemon-mint tzatziki is pretty good, too)
Fish Tacos (really it’s the Chipotle Cream that makes them so good)
Her Honey Mustard recipe

After I had this book for a while, I went back to Half-Priced books and bought them outof copies. I’ve been giving them out as wedding gifts because I love this cookbook that much.

So click on these links and try out her food. Oh, and we’d be happy to come over and help you taste it 🙂

A Pilgrim in the Land of Quinoa

January 15, 2014 by Vanessa

The other day I was sitting at dinner and had the truest realization I have had about my parents in a long time. We (as in me and the two of them) are immigrants in this world that we live in. We inhabit the world of the mostly white upper middle class. All three of us have worked to find our place here. We are happy and fulfilled. We’re not sell-outs. We do more than pay lip service to our roots but we will always be non-natives here. We will always understand things just a little bit differently, we will say things differently, we will love things differently.

It is not in our nature to do some of the things we are trying to do. I have tried for years now, at least seven, to eat healthier and to eat local produce. To become a turnip lover and organic beet juicer. But it has never stuck. I’ve tried to make healthy food for our family. I have never ventured too far into Mexican food territory because only someone who has grown up eating La Lupe’s cooking can appreciate the true horror of enchiladas fried in olive oil and made with fat-free cheese or tacos made with high fiber, whole grain tortillas.

The other day my parents came over for dinner. That night I made Lemon Chicken and Orzo soup with a hint of fresh thyme. It was delicious. My dad ate two bowls. I consumed a heaping bowl of it. Then I put the girls to sleep and came back downstairs to find both my parents eating a plate of chicken mole with rice and beans leftover from a dinner my mom made a few days before. I was offended. My delicious soup of which you ate two bowls wasn’t enough to satisfy you? Wasn’t enough to make you full? My first impulse was to give up trying to help my parents eat healthier. They want to. They try to. But they never stick with it longer than a few weeks.

As I was feeling righteously indignant, I felt the pang of hunger in my stomach. I was still hungry, too. Dammit. I really want a plate of mole and rice and beans, too. But on principle I didn’t serve myself.

I’m familiar with that eating cycle, too. I’ll be disciplined enough to cook food like this for a few weeks: crab salad in wonton cups, garden risotto, curry butternut squash soup. But I will hit a point where I am achingly hungry and I almost tackle the lady that sells tamales around our neighborhood when I see her walking toward our house. Because in my gut, I know I am a pilgrim to this locally grown, seasonal produce land. In my veins courses the blood that calls for hydrogenated fats and high fructose corn syrup. Our people have for too long subsisted on this diet. My body yearns for it.

And so it is with almost every part of me that I try to fight back against my instincts. It takes all the strength I can summon not to yell at my kids when they say they don’t like mole, it takes orchestrated body language to show them that I love the sweet potato and apple quinoa I have placed before them, and it takes a herculean effort to not buy the delicious flour tortillas from the Mexican bakery and eat them slathered with butter all day long.

So we beat on, boats against the current of our childhood, of our most primal reactions, of our earliest lessons. And maybe, like my parents, I’ll spend my lifetime eating a bowl of fancy pants soup and then, right before bed, drink charro beans cold out of the fridge. But I think the desire to eat better does in fact mean we’re eating better. And while balancing the lard and the lychees, the cajeta and the kale, the Knorr Suiza and the nutmeg is hard, I think it is good. So I will continue to navigate these waters and try to find a middle ground with some semblance of grace…and possibly a butter mustache.

Non-Alcoholic Drinks

July 16, 2011 by Vanessa 2 Comments

Empty can of Arizona Green Tea littering a fie... — Image via Wikipedia

But first, a quick aside – isn’t this new site so pretty? B is amazing and worked super hard to get the way I wanted it. And I’m really picky. Um, hun, could you just left justify that word but leave the rest centered? Um, could you make that the same color as the rest? Actually, no, can you change the color? Um, can you pick another graphic? No, I don’t like that, go back to the first. Poor guy. But he loved every second of it. He talked to me endlessly about all the different coding and other things I did not even begin to grasp. I imagine this is what he feels like when I talk about clothes or fabric and stuff.

So, welcome to my new site. I hope you like it. I love it! It’s just so pretty 🙂

Ok, back to the drinks. Since January of 2009 I have only been able to drink beer or other alcoholic beverages with no concern of its effects on my babies for 2 months. If that. I weaned Olivia and then got pregnant pretty soon after so it actually may have only been a few weeks. Now, if you know me, you know I love beer. Even more than margaritas or mojitos or wine. So having to go without for so long, I decided to do something about it this summer. I decided to find non-alcoholic drinks that I liked more than beer that don’t contain high fructose corn syrup. Thing is these drinks are expensive and hard to find. So I decided to make my own. And they are amazingly deee-licious.

Here are the recipes if you want to try them. Seriously when I’m drinking this stuff I don’t envy Kraft who is downing a Bud Light Lime one little bit.

Basil Lemonade: This is a Giada recipe. Honestly I don’t have much luck with her recipes. Every time I cook something of hers, it doesn’t come out well but I had so much basil from our CSA box that I had to find something that used a lot of it fastbefore it turned brown and gross. I will warn you, though, for sure water this puppy down A LOT. I only use about half the sugar that the recipe calls for and use about 2-3 cups more of water. Oh, and if you want to feel fancy, which I usually do if I’m trying to not think of beer, use sparkling water.

Orange Mint Tea: This is from my Mennonite cookbook. Again, I needed something that used a lot of mint quickly, although it does hold up better than basil. Obviously, this recipe is not on the web so I’m going to give it to you from the book – Bring 3 cups of water to a boil. Put in bunch of mint, turn off burner, and cover. Let steep for 20+ minutes. Stir in 1/3 cup of sugar. Add 2 cups of orange juice (no pulp makes it better). Add 1/2 cup lemon juice (I add more). Stir, then add water until it’s no longer strong for you.

Knockoff Arizona Green Tea with Honey and Ginseng: The last drink I found was really more for my dad. My dad gets swept up in fad diets and fad exercising equipment all the time. The latest diet he was reading about said that he should drink lots of green tea. Now my dad does not take to structure at all so he ignored the rest of the diet but decided that he would stick to the green tea thing. So what has he been guzzling down? Arizona Green Tea. Yuck. Might as well be a Coke. So I asked him if I could make a tea that tastes better, would he drink that instead of the Arizona stuff? Sure. Ok, so I embarked on a quest to find something he liked better. Apparently a lot of people have set out on this quest. So it was actually no quest at all, I just googled Arizona green tea with ginseng and there was the recipe. Although I would suggest using 2-3 tea bags instead of just one. I like my tea strong. Oh, and I left out the ginseng. We just didn’t have it. Nor do I even know what it is.

So if you are pregnant, nursing, or don’t have the same affinity for beer that I have, try these recipes out.

Food Revolution

June 18, 2011 by Vanessa 1 Comment

Image by NatalieMaynor via Flickr

I am totally, completely, absolutely in love with the idea of getting all of our food locally. From local farms. Local chickens. Local pigs. Local cows. Local McDonalds. You get it. It is one of the reasons I love Austin and never want to move away. We can actually do this. We gets most of our veggies from our CSA with Johnson’s Backyard Garden (which is freakin’ awesome by the way). There are tons of farms around that we can get fresh eggs, local meat, fresh milk, shoot, even fish.

Today we went to the Farmer’s Market and I needed to buy food for the camp we are helping with next week (I’ll write more about this another day). On Friday we will be providing lunch for them and all the food will be organic or locally sourced. That day we will be teaching them about responsible consumerism when it comes to food. So I planned out a simple menu and went around getting everything I could from the FM. We’re making BLTs so I got bacon and mustard from Dai Due and tomatoes from JBG. For the vegetarians, I bought Hummus from the Mediterranean Chef (I would have made it myself except I can’t figure out how to make it taste good no matter how many times I make it – which is at least 50 times). I looked for lettuce but it’s so hot that it’s out of season now. I’m making mint orange tea so I bought some mint from JBG also. Later on in the week I’m going to buy blackberries from one of the farm stands and bread from Texas French Bread. It’s just awesome how I can get almost an entire meal from local, sustainable sources.

I’m also starting to understand the value of making things when they are in season and freezing them for when they are not.

I guess this all just makes me feel like part of the world. The part of the world that doesn’t live off of quarter pounders and coke. The part that lives of the bounty of the earth. I’m not going to say something as cliche as it makes me feel like I’m in a rhythm with the earth but I do. It also just makes me appreciate the earth and the seasons a lot more.

Man, if you thought I was hippie before coming to Austin, think of where I’m going to be in 10 years. Probably taking care of my own cows for milk and chickens for eggs. Hmm, that would be cool.

Anyways, I totally buy into this food revolution thing. I don’t like Jamie Oliver. I think he is super aggressive and hostile but I completely agree with his message and am happy he is doing what he is doing even if he’s doing it in a pain in the ass kind of way. If you could taste some of the delicious food we’ve been eating because of these veggies we are getting, you’d see how easy it would be to be part of a revolution that just tastes so darn good and no bloodshed. You can’t really beat that.

Overnight Diapers and Kale

May 6, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Diapers.com delivered overnites overnight

Image by lib_rachel via Flickr

I always knew that once I became a mom that I would learn plenty of lessons the hard way. These are 2 that I learned last week.

1) Overnight diapers do, in fact, work.

For more nights than I wish to admit, the Squeaker has been peeing so much at night that it has saturated the diaper and I wake up to find her lying on a big wet spot. So we bought overnight diapers. I didn’t really believe that they worked and just thought it was a trick to charge more for diapers. So after using it for about 1 week with no peeing on the bed I was getting O ready for bed and forgot to put her in an overnight diaper. I realized it as I was buttoning up her jammies. Eh, I got lazy. I didn’t want to take off her clothes and throw away a perfectly good diaper. Bad choice. At 5am O woke up crying, I rolled her toward me to feed her back to sleep and felt her whole back soaked. Crap. I rolled her over and found a wet spot that went from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Lesson learned. Overnight diaper work and must be worn…overnight.

2) Kale does not puree.

I was so excited to buy some nice looking kale at the farmers market and mush it up for O’s dinner the next night. Boy was I wrong. I steamed it for about 40 minutes then threw it in the blender. It’s too hearty. I couldn’t get it mushy enough even after I added a ton of water. Gross. So I had partly pureed purple kale that I could not feed O. I had to do something with it so I put it in a soup I made soon after. It turned the color of the soup into a purpley, brown goo looking mess and because it wasn’t fully pureed there were little bits of kale floating in it. It looked like dirty soup.

Lesson learned.

New Recipes

April 27, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image via Wikipedia

These are a couple of recipes that I have tried recently. They’re super, super fast and easy. I am really slow in the kitchen. Rachael Ray‘s 30 min meals usually take me 2 hours or more. So when I say these recipes are fast, they really are fast.

Baked Eggs with Tomato – I made this for dinner last night. Both me and Kraft are big fans of brinner. I used one of those little 1/2 casserole size dishes, used 5 eggs, fresh mozzarella and basil that we had lying around on top of enough tomato slices to layer the bottom of the dish. Granted I overcooked it and the egg yolks were totally cooked but even with this mistake it was pretty tasty with toast. I would have thrown some bacon in for sure if I had it around at the time.

Right now I am o-b-s-s-e-s-e-d with BLTs. Our CSA has been sending us tons of lettuce. I am pretty good about liking most veggies but I really do not like lettuce and I am really bad at making salads. So week after week more lettuce (not like regular lettuce like romaine or iceberg but peppery and bitter lettuce) gets sent and it piles up in our crisper drawer. That is until I finally thought of this. Easiest thing in the world and that bitter lettuce tastes amazing with bacon and mayo and juicy tomatoes.

Lastly, for dinner tonight we had Sardine and Avocado Sandwiches. I know, the idea of sardines totally grossed me out, too. But we saw this recipe on Good Eats (one of the few cooking shows Kraft will put up with and watch with me) and we love Alton Brown so we decided to trust him. I ran across some sardines in HEB last week and decided to give this a try. Super quick. Super yummy. And super filling. And it didn’t even taste that fishy. Tuna has a fishier taste than sardines.

Bon Appetit.