Leftovers Surprise

Today I launched into grading for my first quarter of my writing class with 64 online students, and with hubby away at suppertime and some easygoing kids in the house, I didn't need to do more than paw through the leftovers to figure out what to make us for supper.  Here's what I wound up with, presented with the hope that it will give you hope for your leftovers!

Middle-and-Far-Eastern Bowl


Assembled from:
Brown rice
Tasty Bite Madras Lentils (1 pouch)
Cooked cauliflower (2 cups)
Black beans (1/2 can)
Falafel dough/batter (which is it, really?)
Asian Green Pepper Salad* (see below)

First in the bowl goes some brown rice. I combined the lentils, cauliflower, and black beans and microwaved them, then browned little "patties" of the falafel mixture in a skillet to kind of crumble on top.  And on my serving I put some of the pepper salad, which made a beautiful garnish.

Verdict: Pretty good. This made enough to serve four generously. The falafel part could easily be left out, or substituted with hummus. The peppers on top were great.  Now for the peppers recipe . . .

Asian Green Pepper Salad


4 large green peppers, cut into matchsticks
1/4 onion, minced
1 stalk celery, diced fine
1 T. rice vinegar (I used the kind with sugar)
1 T. sesame oil
1 T. roasted sesame seeds (in the spice aisle at an Asian grocery)
1 T. snipped cilantro

Combine all ingredients and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Verdict: Excellent. I really like this combination of flavors, and it makes a great garnish on the above leftovers even two days after making it.

While I'm on surprises, I'll share a great salad I enjoyed today:

Black Bean and Pineapple Salad

Mixed baby greens and romaine lettuce (I used about four cups packed)
1/2 small onion, sliced
1/2 can black beans
several chunks fresh pineapple, cut into small bits
1-2 tablespoons creamy dressing of your choice (optional)

Combine and enjoy!  Verdict: Very Good.  This would be nice more dressed up, but it was just a quick lunch for me today.

Clean-the-Kitchen Curry

Since October I have been living a pretty consistent nutritarian lifestyle, but I have also been quite busy. Many times the foods I have made have not really qualified as "recipes," and sometimes I have but I just haven't been able to post them.  I do keep this blog in mind and hope to begin posting more frequently.

For supper tonight I made a spectacular curry, if I do say so myself! :-)  I'm going to type up the recipe as I recall it, for posterity.

Clean-the-Kitchen Curry

2 teaspoons peanut oil (I actually used 1 T. but could have cut it)
3 cubed small potatoes
1/2 cup baby carrots
1/2 chopped onion
3 medium cloves garlic, sliced
12 oz. frozen green beans, chopped into one-inch pieces
1 cup cauliflower florets
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
2 cups stewed tomatoes (mine were from our garden, reduced, with basil)
1 teaspoon coriander
2 teaspoons cumin
1-2 T. red curry powder
small dried hot pepper
1/2 cup light coconut milk (75 calories -- I used 2/3 cup but could have cut it)

Saute potato, carrot, and then onion and garlic in oil, add green beans and cauliflower, then pepper, and when nearly tender add tomatoes with spices and hot pepper.  Near the end, taste and correct seasoning, then add coconut milk.

Serve over rice or lentils, with condiments like raisins, green onion, apple with lemon and fresh ginger, toasted coconut, toasted almonds, and diced tomatoes. (I had mine on lentils and offered the family a dish with roasted pork to add to theirs.)

Not counting the condiments or the base (rice or lentils), the recipe analyzes as follows:
1100 calories
41 grams fat (13 saturated, 11 polyunsaturated, 16 monounsaturated)
175 grams carbs (35 grams fiber)
26 grams protein

Per serving (1/4 of recipe makes a LARGE serving)
253 calories
10 grams fat
44 grams carbs (9 grams fiber)
7 grams protein

RDAs
Vitamin A - 40%
Vitamin B6 - 53%
Vitamin C - 106%
Vitamin E - 13%
Calcium - 9%
Copper - 45%
Iron - 11%
Manganese - 33%
Niacin - 23%
Pantothenic Acid - 21%
Phosphorus - 20%
Potassium - 23%
Riboflavin - 17%
Selenium - 2%
Thiamin - 23%
Zinc - 12%

Interesting that that serving also contributes 400 grams of water, or about 1-1/2 cups :-)

The 2/3 cup of lentils I had this on top of raises the one serving by
150 calories
1/2 gram fat
25 grams carbohydrate (10 from fiber)
12 grams protein

The lentils also add significant (more than 20% RDA of) potassium, phosphorus, iron, and manganese, with more than 10% of thiamin, vitamin B6, copper, magnesium, and zinc.

That's a pretty powerful supper!  400 calories, 10 grams fat, 70 grams carbs (19 from fiber), 14 grams protein

OK, I've analyzed that to death. I just have to do that from time to time. :-)

My New Cookbook

Yesterday I had a lovely outing in a community about 25 miles away for supper and book-browsing with a group of lady friends. You see, we live in and on the outskirts of small towns and have to do without Target, Starbucks, interesting and healthy restaurants, and even Super WalMart!  So a trip to the exurb of Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania is quite a tame little adventure for us. And of course the company makes the outing--seven in an assortment of married, single, and widowed, with children ranging from toddlers to one about forty. Thanks, ladies!

We gathered at Aladdin's Eatery and had a wide range of things from hummus and falafel through soup and salads and lamb entrees to some take-home desserts (for those who were too stuffed to eat cake there).  I had V-9 soup, a clear-broth veggie soup in which we identified peas, celery, onion, pepper, yellow squash, tomato, parsley, and I've forgotten what else. I also got the almond salad--a bed of romaine, mostly, with mushrooms and cucumbers and some slivered toasted almonds, with a dressing of buttermilk, sour cream, almond paste, and sauteed almonds I just had to try. I had about half my dressing and brought the rest home to enjoy on something another day. It was very interesting, and creamy was good, but only in small doses for a nutritarian, don't you know!  I had a pita, two, which I wrapped up and brought home for a family member (whoever gets to it first). And since hubby was home alone for the evening, I brought him a little pastry I thought they called a baba, which is a sticky-sweet hard shell of phyllo-like dough around a filling of Turkish pistachios. I had a tiny fragment of this to taste, and it was very nice.

Anyway, when we got to Barnes and Noble, supposedly for coffee, though I skipped it after three mugs of herbal mint tea at Aladdin's, I headed back to the healthy/vegetarian cookbooks section and browsed through a few. I'm not into fake meat things like seitan and too much tofu, so some things didn't appeal at all because of heavy use of these ingredients. Others use a lot of syrups and other sweet things--nope, didn't want that, either. Nor too much of grains. I was not really wowed by the famous Veganomicon, but then I spied a winner: Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites.

I have loved the original Moosewood Cookbook since I think my sister gave it to me a decade or two ago, and, as a friend says, there's nothing bad in it--everything is delicious.

So I browsed through the Low-Fat Favorites book and saw some potential winners, though I was surprised at a fish section.  For Sunday dinner I'm going to make Fish Tagine with Chermoulla (this link is exactly the same recipe except  for the swordfish or halibut in the Internet recipe), white fish baked on top of a bed of carrots and onions, with a sauce of blended cilantro, garlic, ginger, cumin, lemon juice, chile, and tomato, then served on couscous, which I just happened to buy the other day.

Since we have a lot of peppers around, still, I think I'm going to try soon Middle Eastern Tofu-Stuffed Peppers, which include carrot, tomato, tofu, soy sauce, dill, lemon, couscous, and currants. Maybe I'll even skip the tofu. A Mexican stuffed pepper recipe uses corn and black beans. How about Garlicky Black-Eyed Peas 'N' Greens? To use some nice cauliflower in the fridge I might try Lentil Sambar, which includes some exotic spices like coriander (just harvested from our garden) and fenugreek (never used it--might look for a substitute).

I'm looking forward to this!

Ongoing Review : "Aggressive Weight Loss Plan (non-vegetarian)" Part Two

Go here for Part One.

The one-week plan is stretching out to about ten days for me, and I will not get to all the recipes, since the groceries I have on hand don't match and/or the remaining recipes don't look too great.  So I need to make a menu and a grocery list and start over today or tomorrow, and in the meantime I'm having a lot of leftover this and that.  What's great about the nutritarian recipes is that I know I can grab this or that and be confident that it's "on plan" for the most part. If it has a starch in it I'll skip it today, since I had oatmeal for breakfast. If it has nuts I'll consider how that fits with the other nut/seed things I have had for the day.  And after about nine days I've lost about seven pounds, so that's a nice aggressive start! :-)

I read somewhere recently that the new books (Eat for Health) have better recipes than the old one (Eat to Live).  But for those who are serious, ETL has the quick start and the more science-oriented discussions.  I really look forward to working through the recipes site at drfuhrman.com in the Member Center and getting great new ideas from others.

I'm definitely enjoying the leftovers, though I'm often "tired" enough of a recipe by the time I serve it that it doesn't appeal too much the first time around.

So, without further ado, here are my impressions of several more recipes from the "Aggressive Weight Loss Plan (non-vegetarian)" :

Excellent

• Roasted Mixed Vegetables (photo here, and it does look a lot like mine) (very tasty mix of cruciferous veggies and carrots and asparagus, with garlic, balsamic vinegar, and soy sauce roasted at 450 and finished at 350 to keep them from getting too dry -- and I added the asparagus late for just that reason. I even skipped the brown rice in the original recipe, because I was having butternut squash seasoned with pineapple tidbits and dates, plus a bit of plain potato with my Great Greens -- see below.)
• Tasty Hummus (went VERY simple on this one -- the recipe in the plan calls for the addition of soy sauce and horseradish, but no thanks -- mine is garbanzos, tahini [less than you might think], lemon juice, and garlic, and it is fabulous -- I'm craving it)

Pretty Good

• Great Greens (simple steamed mix of kale, chard, and spinach, dressed with garlic, wine vinegar or balsamic or similar, fresh dill, and basil)
• Rolled Eggplant or "Roulade" (eggplant slices marinated in balsamic vinegar and water, then rolled around a filling of red and green bell pepper., onion, garlic, tomato sauce and tomatoes, and herbs that have been simmered together for a while, with more of the sauce on top -- the whole thing baked for a while)
• Bean Enchiladas (I made this a layered casserole of corn tortillas with a simmered mixture of green pepper, onion, salsa verde [though the original called for regular salsa], black and white and pinto beans, frozen corn, cumin, and cilantro -- and I encouraged the family to melt cheese on top of theirs if they liked)

What I'm Not Making

• Chard and Vegetable Medley (onion, garlic, yellow squash, chard, bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, balsamic vinegar -- just too much like the other stuff I've been eating, and I'm out of greens) 
• Cream of Asparagus Soup (steamed asparagus blended with soy milk [I'd use regular lowfat milk], soy sauce [or liquid aminos], raw cashews, cilantro for garnish, and -- really? -- four dates.  I may actually make this since I have the ingredients, but I'm not sure.)
• Dijon Pistachio Dressing/Dip (may try it later but just haven't needed it -- pistachios, lemon juice, ground flax, mustard, soy sauce, garlic, and a date)
• Lisa's Lovely Lentil Stew (just haven't gotten to it -- lentils, onion, basil, tomatoes, celery -- I'll probably be more adventurous)
• Russian Fig Dressing/Dip (blecch! pasta sauce, almond butter, sunflower seeds, fig vinegar)

The Never-Ending Smoothie

This morning I used the last third of the GRAPEFRUIT-BERRY SMOOTHIE I made the other day, but it wasn't going to be enough for my breakfast, so I added a navel orange and more flax seed meal. Too tart and "weak" (navel orange wasn't the best quality). So I thought to add a few frozen blueberries and accidentally tipped too many into the blender. But I blended away and wound up with too much for today's breakfast. So I wonder how many incarnations this smoothie will have before I'm done with it! What should today's be called? Maybe 2X2 SMOOTHIE, having two citruses and two kinds of berries. But that doesn't account for the flax, spinach, and banana in there, too. Whatever.

MOTLEY CHILI SOUP

I started with a desire to make white bean chili, but I didn't have enough flavorful ingredients to make it work, and then it ended up thinner than I intended and we didn't have time to let it cook down sufficiently. So here's what I did, one step at a time.

tablespoon canola oil
small onion, chopped
half a green pepper, chopped
three cloves garlic, sliced
about three or four cups cooked navy beans with a bit of liquid
half a large can diced tomatoes
two teaspoons cumin
quarter cup sliced home-canned jalapenos (briny, not too vinegary)
two tablespoons chicken soup base
two tablespoons chili seasoning
water as needed (probably a pint to a quart)
small bag frozen corn
can chili beans with their liquid

Sautee the chopped veggies in the oil and then add the other ingredients, letting water come to a boil before adding the corn, then the chili beans. Adjust seasoning.

Verdict--Very Good for just thrown together at 9pm. I put a pinch of shredded cheese on top of mine and had a toasted corn taco shell (45 calories?) with it.

TODAY'S MENU

Breakfast--Smoothie described above, handful of nuts and raisins

Sunday Dinner--Pink lady apple, 2 oz. lean pork chop with cranberry sauce, leftover Indian rice and lentils from last night, cup of cauliflower (seared, steamed, and dressed with a bit of tomato relish), huge salad of dark greens and other veggies with low-cal balsamic dressing and a touch of ranch, square of chili-cherry dark chocolate. :-)

Snack--I succumbed to a number of emotional pressures this afternoon and had probably a third cup of chocolate chips and pecans, then about four bites of a chocolate chip cake my daughter made. Sigh.

Supper--Navel orange, MOTLEY CHILI SOUP, pinch of shredded cheddar, toasted corn taco shell (45 calories?)

Craving Curry

My plate was so pretty at supper I asked hubby Glenn to take a photo of it:



CAULIFLOWER CURRY

Use the link to see the recipe (cauliflower, tomatoes, red onion, coriander from our garden, cumin, hot green pepper, cilantro from a frozen paste made earlier this summer from our garden). I made it with just one tablespoon of oil and with part of an anaheim pepper instead of a jalapeno, and most of a small can of diced tomatoes and their juice. For the rest of the family I served rice and pork chops with this.

Verdict--Very Good. I prefer sweet curries, but this has a nice, clean flavor. Hubby thinks it could use more hot pepper.

RAITA SALAD

1 cucumber, partially peeled and sliced fairly thin
1/4 cup plain lowfat yogurt
1 teaspoon honey
several fresh mint leaves, snipped
dash of salt

Verdict--Very Good. I wanted something cool to go with that cauliflower!

MOOSEWOOD HUMMUS

I have the original of The New Moosewood Cookbook (Mollie Katzen's Classic Cooking), and the above link explains the procedure and ingredients for Mollie Katzen's recipe. I omitted the scallions, yogurt, and cumin, and I scanted on the tahini, but I doubled up on the garlic. I haven't had tahini in the house for a long time, so we got used to olive-oil hummus, which is good but different from this.

Verdict--Excellent. I really enjoyed this as a dip for baby-cut carrots. Very satisfying and rich.

TODAY'S MENU

Breakfast--Leftover steel-cut oats with apples, microwaved with a handful of frozen blueberries and a sprinkling of walnuts

Lunch--Leftover STUFFED GARDEN VEGGIES (I was thrilled to find these in the back of the fridge--one pepper and one zucchini boat, with the tomato sauce garnish!); giant pear

Snack--Small orange

Supper--CAULIFLOWER CURRY, RAITA SALAD, HUMMUS with carrots to dip in it, steamed green beans from our garden, small serving of sweet white wine

Supper turned into a feast tonight!

Leftovers and an Outing--Navratan Korma!

Breakfast--Orange; leftover oatmeal with peaches, cinnamon, and nutmeg

Lunch--Apple, leftover asparagus vinaigrette with tomatoes, leftover FRENCH BEAN AND POTATO SALAD, small handful mixed nuts with a few raisins

Supper--Flavor of India restaurant--I may order the Navratan Korma, which is billed as a mixture of nine vegetables and fruits cooked in a cashew sauce. This recipe video has seven vegetables, I think, and milk, along with paneer (cheese cubes), but it's inspiring!

Update: I did order the Navratan Korma, which seemed to have the same sauce as my neighbor's Chicken Korma, and we agreed it must have had some dairy, but probably just 2% milk, not cream. I couldn't detect any paneer, and my version had cauliflower, peas, green pepper, carrots, onion, pear, apple, and . . . hmmm . . . maybe peppers? I had it over smallish servings of basmati rice, I had a small portion of the on-the-table crispy lentil tortilla kind of thing with two sauces--one plummy and one green-minty, and later at Starbucks I had half-and-half in my coffee and 100 calories of dark-chocolate grahams. It was a splurge, yes, but a moderate one, and much enjoyed! :-)