Tag: Vegetarian

Food Buzz 24, 24, 24: 12 hungry guests + 12 course meal = 24 great things!

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I was so excited when Food Buzz chose me to be part of their 24, 24, 24 this month!  So for my meal, I decided to make a 12 course vegetarian meal inspired by the 12 Days of Christmas!  I invited a bunch of friends over and as soon as I got back to Los Angeles on Thursday I started preparing.

Keeping in line with my December Recipe Challenge, this meal was entirely vegetarian and tried to include any many vegetables as possible, while still tasting delicious!  I tried out new recipes and made up a few of my own!

Here’s how the evening went:

Thanks to the help of my wonderful sister, I set up the table to reflect the holiday spirit! Complete with decorative menus!

Then after the guests arrived, the first two courses were standing appetizers wine we all mingled.

12 Drummers Drumming: Vegetarian Drumsticks


Talia obviously is one of those 12 drummers!

11 Pipers Piping: Cheesy Puff Pipes


Tim knows how to work that pipe!

Then we were ready to sit down to dinner…

10 Lords A-leaping:  Leaping Lentil Salad


I wore many hats… cook, waitress, eater…

9 Ladies Dancing: Flamenco Favas


8 Maids A-Milking: Creamy Artichoke Soup


7 Swans A-Swimming: Spaghetti Swimming in a Special Sauce


6 Geese A-Laying: Quiche

5 Golden Rings: Pineapple Ring Salad


4 Calling Birds: Cauliflower Gratin


3 French Hens: Savory Crepe



2 Turtle Doves: Turtle Clusters

Of course no meal is without at least one mishap!  My caramel turned out a little bit too hard…

We all had a good laugh 🙂  Still tasted good and if you broke a tooth, you were in a house full of dentists!

A Partridge in a Pear Tree: Pears in Red Wine

A 12 course meal for 12 people made entirely by me!  I can’t believe I pulled that off!  That was definitely the ultimate recipe challenge!

It was a ton of work but totally worth it!  Thanks Food Buzz for this great opportunity!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Catching Up

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Hey all!  I hope you’re all doing well!  I’m home and it’s 73 degrees out!  Yesterday when I got home I was so tired!  So I was in bed by 9:30pm!  But before I jumped into bed, I managed to consumer this:

Guatemalan sweet bread.  My house generally has two things: some sort of Guatemalan bread and a ton of bananas.

Case in point… Yes, we are half monkey…

This morning I was up by 6:00am (time change and early to bed did it I guess).  I lounged around (aka watched trash TV like The Sex and the City E! True Hollywood Story) and by the time everyone left for work, I took over the living room and did Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred!  It was intense!  I’m going to try to do it 4-5 times a week the whole time I’m home.  Anyone else want to try this with me?

Then I took a shower and made a tasty lunch! Sandwich and Salad:

1 Boca Burger, half on the sandwich and half on the salad.  The sandwich has about a tablespoon of hummus as my condiment, a bunch of spinach and few tomato slices.

My salad had romaine, tomato, half a boca burger and a bit of BBQ sauce as dressing.

Yum!

Now I’m off to get ready for my super secret event/post that is taking place tomorrow night!  Here’s a hint:

Have a great day!

Using My Leftovers: Part I

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Today has been a busy day!  My land use plan is due on Thursday so today I had a group meeting at 10:00am and we worked from 10am til about 4pm, with only a short lunch break!

Then I needed a break so I headed to the gym, where the fire alarm went off about 30 minutes into my work out… after waiting outside a few minutes I went back inside and finished up.

Then I came home and was ravenous.  Oatmeal and a cup of soup is not enough for a day!

So I decided to throw together a bunch of stuff that needed to be used.  Sadly my wine mushroom dream was squashed when I realized the wine was a sweet wine!  Oh well… I made due with what I had

I sauteed 2 carrots, 1/2 an onion and 6 mushrooms with some rosemary, paprika, salt and pepper, then added a chopped up morningstar patty to create this fabulous thing:

The other side dish was my version of homefries.  Microwave as many potatoes as you’d like to use.  Then after they’re pre-cooked, chop them into large pieces.  Heat up a teaspoon of olive oil and put them in the pan with the olive oil to get brown and crispy.  I also added rosemary, paprika, salt and pepper to keep the trend alive, but chili powder and cumin is a great combo too!

They were pretty tasty, healthy and a million times faster than roasting potatoes!

New Moon was fantastic once again, for the record. It’s terrible in every way but fantastic if you’ve read the books!

Now I’m off to work on land use some more and hopefully start packing!  2 days til I’m back in California!  Woo!

Hope you all had a great day!

P.S. I have a surprise post on December 20th that I’m super excited about!  If you know *cough* Laura and Tim *cough* don’t say anything!

December Recipe Challenge: Potato Gnocchi

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I should probably preface this with the fact that this was a fail…

About a month ago, I bought a 5lb bag of potatoes for under $2.00.  Since it’s been a month I decided I should probably make use of them.  I also happened to have an open jar of pasta sauce that needs to be used.  Here’s the next addition to the December Recipe Challenge…  it seemed like a few ingredients, a little labor intensive but manageable!

Again I got this recipe from 101 Cookbooks, Heidi calls it How to Make Gnocchi like an Italian Grandmother.  I call it potato gnocchi.  Here’s my version, only 1 change (whole wheat flour for all purpose, which I think was the cause of fail):

Potato Gnocchi

2 lbs of potatoes
1/4 cup egg
1 cup of whole wheat flour
Salt

Boil the potatoes with the peel until tender, save the water.  Then lay the potatoes out on a large cutting board, peel and mash with a fork.

Leave it to cool a bit then add the egg and 3/4 of the flour.

Knead it very lightly, add more flour as needed.

Divide the dough into 8 pieces and roll each piece into a long worm shape.  Cut worm into 1/2inch – 3/4 inch pieces.

Shape them on the side of a fork (I can’t show this since I only have two hands).  Reboil the water and put gnocchi in the water until they float to the top.

Enjoy with olive oil and salt or some pasta sauce.

Sadly this wasn’t very delicious.  I didn’t even finish making the batch 😦  Not very delicious… In fact my dinner ended up being this:

Oh well.  We can’t win them all!

What’s your most recent recipe fail?

Knock Off Moosewood Dressing

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Remember when I went to Moosewood and fell in love with the lemon-tahini dressing??  Well I decided to recreate it today.

After a trip to the Salvation Army all the way in Cortland (because the Ithaca one simply would not do) to shop for our ugly sweater/Liz’s B-Day party (My sweater is fantastic! I can’t wait to show you all!), we stopped by Ludgate Farms a local farm/store.  I bought a lovely Fingerlakes Salad bouquet!

I ran home and started making my salad with: Fingerlake Lettuce, Carrots, and left over lentil burgers chopped into pieces.  Then I added my knock off Moosewood Lemon Tahini dressing:

Knock Off Moosewood Lemon Tahini Dressing:

1/2 cup tahini
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 tsp cumin
few shakes for cayenne
salt and pepper
enough water to make it the right consistency

These are all estimate measurements as I started with a certain amount and added more as needed.  So if you try it making it you’ll have to try it occassionally and add more or less until you get it to be fantastic!

This made kind of a lot of dressing, so it’ll probably last a long time.  But the final product was pretty tasty!

Now off to write my statistics paper and work on my fitness (Fergie anyone?)

December Recipe Challenge: Vegetarian Lentil Burgers

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As you may have gathered, I’m a huge fan of veggie patties.  I eat them all the time.  Unfortunately, they’re expensive and I’m broke.  So I was looking around for a recipe for some sort of patty that’s cheap to make that would fit the need of my December Recipe Challenge (aka healthy).

While perusing 101 Cookbooks, I came across this recipe for Vegetarian Lentil Burgers and decided to try it.  The recipe is really basic so I added a few things to it to spice it up.

Vegetarian Lentil Burger:

adapted from 101 Cookbooks

1 and 1/2 cup cooked lentils
2 eggs (or 1/2 cup egg beater type product)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp minced garlic
1 shake of cayenne pepper
1/2 onion finely chopped
1/2 cup whole wheat bread crumbs
1 tsp olive oil

Ingredient, minus the onion because I forgot to include it in the picture 😦

I cooked some lentils (slightly undercooked since the recipe said to use black lentils which apparently are less mushy than the lentils I have), then put 1 and 1/2 cup of lentils in the food processor with the egg, salt, garlic and cayenne.

Then I processed it for a few seconds, til it looked like chunky hummus.  I wanted to have who lentils still in it, but you can probably process it more if you prefer.

Then I combined the lentil mixture with the onions and breadcrumbs in a bowl .

I formed the mixture into patties (I think I got 8 out of this, medium sized).

Heated the oil and cooked them (covered) for about 8-10 minutes.  On medium heat.  If you have a lid that’s great if not, use foil like I did.

Enjoy!

These turned out pretty well!  I like them!  Next time I would add a little more salt or other spices to make them a little more fun. I still have a ton of lentils that I cooked so I think next time I’ll try making them with a Moroccan twist by adding cumin, corriander, cinnamon and lemon!

Also, don’t forget to suggest a cake!

December Recipe Challenge: Quinoa Mediterraneana

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Ordinarily, when invited to a gathering, I bring a baked good.  I like to bake and I’m not too bad at it, so I figure why not.  However, I’m trying to break out of my comfort zone and get a little healthier.  So in the spirit of the December Recipe Challenge, I’m bringing Quinoa Mediterraneana to my department’s Dish-to-Pass Holiday Party today!

I found this recipe on Food Network.  I made a few changes and omitted pine nuts (because they’re just too expensive and they didn’t have any in the bulk food section so I couldn’t just just a handful) and parsley (because I’m not a fan so why would I waste 99 cents! Every penny counts!)

Here’s my version:

Quinoa Mediterraneana

adapted from Food Network Quinoa Mediterraneana

2 cups dry quinoa
3 and 1/2 cups water (The recipe calls for 4.5 and I used that but my quinoa turned out WAYYY too mushy, so try less water)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 canned artichoke hearts
1/4 cup or 1 small 2.25 oz can of black olives
1/2 bunch about 3 cups of chopped spinach (you can chiffonade–cut into strips– as the recipe says, fancy right??)
2 Roma tomatoes diced
Greek Dressing (recipe follows)
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

First gather your ingredients…

Rinse your quinoa and put in a big big pot with water, salt and oil.  First I thought I was going to use my littler bit pot but turns out I needed the jumbo pot!

Bring to a boil and simmer for 15-2o minutes.  Let the quinoa chill for a bit while you do the rest.

Chop up your ingredients and set them aside

Then start making your dressing

Greek Dressing:

zest of 1 lemon
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
Juice of 1 orange
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 tsp dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste

To make the dressing:

Zest your lemon and juice squeeeze your orange juice.  You can use a zester or a microplane (I want one of these so bad but haven’t been willing to pony up the dough for it).  You can also use store bought orange juice(recipe actually calls for this).  I didn’t because I don’t like orange juice and it was cheaper for me just to buy an orange.

Combine all the ingredients and set aside.

Add the tomatoes, artichoke hearts, olives spinach and dressing to the cooked quinoa.

Mix it up and top with crumbled feta!

It was pretty quick and easy to make, not mention colorful!

Enjoy!  I tried a little bit and I really like it!  Great flavor combination.  I just wish my quinoa hadn’t turned out mushy but that can be fixed next time with less water 🙂

I hope everyone at my party likes it 🙂

Have a great day!!

Guatemalan Black Beans: Part II

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I’m glad you all enjoyed Part I of the Guatemalan Black Bean Saga.  Here’s part II:

But first another picture from Guatemala…

Me in front of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala on a very hazy day!

Once you’re tired of eating whole beans, you can use your left overs and make some refried beans!  Growing up we had refried black beans, eggs and tortillas for breakfast on weekends.  It’s still one of my favorite breakfasts (and I LOVE breakfast food).  Soo good!

Frijoles Volteados:

2 cups Cooked Black Beans (Reserve some of the liquid)
1/2 small onion diced (optional I didn’t use any)
1/2 tbsp olive oil
salt to taste

Step one: add as much beans as you want to make in the blender (I recommended two cups above but I only had about a cup).  Add a little bit of the liquid and blend until smooth, almost like a thick soup.  (You can stop here if you want to enjoy some frijoles licuados, essentially a black bean soup).


Step two: Dice your onion into small pieces.  Heat 1/2 tbsp of olive oil in a pan on medium to high heat. Add onions to heated pan, cook til onions are cooked through.  Skip this step if you choose not to use onions as I did

Step three: add blended beans to the pan.  Stir until thick (this will take about 10 minutes), watch out for splashing beans!  They burn!  (My mom warns me about this every single time I tell her that I make these).

Then as they thicken, it’ll start to separate from the pan, once you shake the pan and they form a solid log shape, turn them onto a plate.  You can slice it with a butter knife to serve… Doesn’t look very cute, but tastes delicious!

Step four: Enjoy with scrambled eggs, tortillas and sour cream or queso fresco!

I wish I had nice thick corn tortilla and plantains.  Unfortunately in upstate NY, they’ve only heard of flour tortillas and plantains don’t exist (I keep meaning to check the Asian market to double check this).

Once you try these, you’ll never want to buy a can of refried beans again!

In Other News… In case you hadn’t noticed… this site is now officially http://www.foodologie.com!  Woo!

Guatemalan Black Beans: Part I

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Black beans are a staple in the Guatemalan diet.  Most people don’t know a whole lot about Guatemala, so I figured why not share one of my favorite foods (and pretty much the thing I miss most about living at home).

My grandma eats black beans every day and is convinced it keeps her healthy.  Whether or not that’s true, I grew up eating them quite a bit.  I think they’re pretty tasty and would be totally okay with eating them everyday, health benefits are an added bonus!

My Grandma and Me, walking through some ruins in Guatemala

Black beans can be enjoyed in many, many ways, but the two most common ways they are enjoyed in Guatemala is whole beans (parados) often in a soup form or refried (volteados).  This recipe is how my family makes them.  Obviously, each family has a  different recipe, but I think these are pretty tasty and simple.

Frijoles Parados:

1lb of black beans
1 garlic clove
1 large onion
salt to taste (we’re salty eaters so we kind of use a lot)

*I made less than this since it’s just me eating: I used about a cup of dry beans, 1 small onion and a 1/2 tsp minced garlic since I didn’t have a whole clove.

Step One: Sort through your beans to make sure there are no rocks or shriveled old beans up in there!  Soak your beans over night or at least 4 hours in a pot.

Step Two: Drain the soaking water

Step 3: Cut the ends off an onion and peel a garlic clove place them in the pot with your beans.  Add some salt (1/2 tsp? 1 tsp? depending on  how much you make).  Add enough fresh water to cover your beans and most onion.

Step 4: Bring water to a boil then simmer for about an hour and a half or until beans are tender.

Step 5:  Ladle some into a bowl and enjoy with a dollop of sour cream!

Coming Soon… Part II of the Guatemalan Black Bean Saga…

I must be really into series posts…

Moosewood

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Since the lovely fella is leaving tomorrow 😦 we decided to go on a “hot date.”  So in a foodie’s life that means go out to a great restaurant.  We decided on Moosewood because I’ve been obsessing over it heard it’s delicious.  You may have heard of Moosewood because of their cookbooks.  Moosewood is a collectively-owned, vegetarian restaurant and pretty much an Ithaca landmark.  Their menu changes daily and most items have the option of being vegan as well (i.e. omitting cheese)

Dinner was pretty delicious.

I started with a glass of wine, the lovely fella got an Ithaca Pale Ale while perusing the menu.  Both were delicious

Then came the house salads.  Oh my goodness.  This salad was probably the best part of the entire meal!  I got the Lemon-Tahini dressing.  It was fantastic!  I’m going to try to recreate it ASAP!  The lovely fella got the house dressing, which was a creamy spinach-basil dressing.  It was equally delicious.  I can’t decide which one I liked better.

As my entree, I got the Savannah Stew (Sweet potatoes, kale, green beans, celery, bell peppers, zucchini, yellow squash and tomatoes simmered with Old Bay seasoning, lemon and thyme, topped with cheddar cheese (opt.) and  served with freshly baked scallion cornbread (v))  That is the menu description.  The (v) means vegan.  I got the cheese on top so it was not completely vegan.

Oh man!  This was one of the best stews I’ve ever had!  It was so flavorful and hearty!

The lovely fella got the Roasted Vegetable Lasagna (Layers of lasagna noodles, roasted portabello and white mushrooms, eggplant and zucchini, whipped (local organic Ithaca Soy) tofu “ricotta”, baked in a savory tomato-basil wine sauce;
topped with mozzarella cheese (opt.)).  He liked his, but I wasn’t a fan.  The tofu was really bland (as tofu generally is) and slightly bitter.  Sure glad he liked it!  The lasagna minus the tofu was great!  Here he is with his dinner 🙂

Then of course came dessert.  The menu said there was carrot cake, so we ordered that.  However, the waiter let us know this is was actually banana cake!  I was instantly sold, as I am a banana fiend.

Honestly, it wasn’t the best I’ve ever had (on that note, the best Banana Cake I’ve ever had was in the Azores, Portuguese Islands, I studied abroad in Portugal and seriously I still dream about that cake).  The frosting was a little too sweet and the cake was kind of dense.

That being said it was still tasty and greatly appreciated!

Overall, Moosewood was pretty good and I recommend it to anyone in the Ithaca area.

Also, tonight was the first time I felt like a food blogger haha.  I took pictures of everything.  I lugged the big camera.  It was less nerve wracking than I thought it would be and now I’m glad to have the pictures.  So if you hesitate at all to take pictures in public, don’t!

Now I’m stuffed and off to either work on a project or watch a movie.  I can’t decide… I have a feeling it’ll be the movie since the lovely fella is leaving tomorrow 😦

Goodnight!