Peppers on Quinoa

We got a working toaster oven today - I don't know why that made it suddenly feel easy to cook peppers when I could have been doing them in the regular oven all this time, but it did.

I tossed half each of an orange, red, and yellow pepper in 2 tsp of oil, sprinkled with salt, and put them in at 450 degrees.

The quinoa was done like pasta, with a half cube of fake chicken broth, spinach, and green onions.

I don't know what to call these. Things in a pan?

Is it a stir-fry? It doesn't feel like it... It look like 'salads' I see elsewhere, but it's hot... I don't know.

Something kind of Mexican?

I'm trying to get at something, but this isn't quite it.

I had this craving for something spicy - I'm not a spicy food person at all, but I think I'm going to start pushing that a little. I'm not ready for jalapeños, but that's the goal.

Having these liking-things goals really works for me... I find if I just eat something often enough, I'll eventually become okay with it. I did it with mustard, pickles, sugarless coffee, and I think I can do it with heat.

So for lunch today, I threw this together. I kind of went with my gut about what to put it, and it told me cauliflower, spinach, black beans, and salsa, on top of quinoa. I didn't embellish with garlic or onions or spices because I thought the salsa would have all that covered and I was a little nervous about overdoing it.

It actually turned out almost on the bland side. I think I could have added more salsa, but I think next time I'll do some more experimentation with individual ingredients and the same amount of out-of-the-jar salsa.

For the next iteration, I'm thinking more pepper, chopped onion, and possibly stirring some chili powder or something like that into the quinoa. We'll see.

Quinoa, Chickpeas, and Veggies

After a long, McDonald's-filled hiatus, I'm back to cooking meals from scratch on a regular basis. I cleaned out the cupboards, which had been collecting an assortment of "maybe I'll use this someday..." products, shoved to the back, lentils and popcorn kernels loose on the shelves, and a surprising amount of dog hair. Now it's all orderly, and I'm trying to work my way through all stored food in there before I buy more. 

Because it was there, since I always passed it over, I finally started using my quinoa and found a way to like it. Quinoa always seemed like a huge hassle to me because every single time I cooked it, it stuck like glue to the pot and I'd end up with half of what I put in and a difficult mess to clean. 

Then I realized I could make it like pasta,  with tons of extra water, and just drain it at the end. It's been revolutionary. 

I don't really know what I'm doing in the kitchen, so I usually just throw some things in a pan. I think I've developed a very.. accepting palette because of this. Stuff tastes good to me, but I'm rarely confident that I could serve it to anyone else. But this particular variation worked, and not just on a good-enough-for-me level - I'm pretty pleased.

I used:

1/3 c. quinoa

1/2  fake-chicken bouillon cube

1 tsp. olive oil

1  garlic clove

1/4  of a big tomato

1/3c. chick peas

a handful of green beans

a stalk of broccoli

pepper

The quinoa went into a pot of water and boiled for just under 15 minutes. Around 10 minutes in, I threw in the chopped up bouillon cube - I found that when I let it soak in too much, it was overwhelming. 

In the meantime, I put the garlic in oil on the pan, let it get brown, then threw in the chopped tomato. It hung out there for a while during the bean/broccoli chopping. I threw in some chickpeas, then steamed the vegetables in the microwave before adding them to the pan.

I spooned the quinoa from the pot to the pan, not draining it very thoroughly. Mixed it all up, ground some pepper over it, and that was it. 

It tasted like Chinese fried rice, a little. The garlic and the moderate broth were an awesome combination. 

It'll be hard not to just do this every time and eat the same thing every day. 

Split Pea Soup

A few days ago I was in need of some parental comfort so I took the bus home. When I got there, my mum had a pot of split pea soup on the stove and it was the exact perfect thing to make me feel ten times better. I've never made soup before but my mom's was so great I thought maybe I could do it too. 

And I came pretty close!

I sauteed half an onion, minced, and a clove of garlic, also minced, in some oil. Then I added 6 cups of water, 1 cup of split peas, a potato and a few stalks of celery, both roughly chopped. I also threw in a bunch of salt and pepper. It cooked for just under an hour and a half and then I used a little hand blender thing to get a smooth consistency. 

It was good. Super peppery, but I love pepper so that was great. I think I'll add a little more water when I reheat it. 

Shepherd's Pie

First: the pies
Then: the incident.

When we moved to Toronto, J and I decided that we should try to cook from home as much as possible and this includes one night a week where each of us just makes something with no 'what're we going to eat?' 'I don't know, what do you want?'

The problem is that he's a carnivore and I'm a herbivore who has never cooked meat before. It's icky, and there are limits to what I'll do (I can't cut up raw meat or beat it with a hammer or anything) but I've always promised to be an easygoing vegetarian and not impose my diet on others so I want to be able to cook for him. Ground beef / chicken is the one thing I feel semi-comfortable with because I can see when it's done and I don't have to rub anything into it. J is also a very good cook so it's hard to present him with a meal that I know he could have made ten times better. Shepherd's pie is something that I felt pretty confident would go well and it's so basic and hearty that it's bound to be awesome no matter who makes it. So I made it.

I made two - one with fake meat and one with the real stuff. The framework for what I did came from For the Love of Cooking but I changed a lot. It was most useful for how to cook the beef.

I served it with gravy (beef for him, mushroom for me) and it was soooo delicious. And the best part is: there are leftovers!

Now.... I am a walking disaster. The pies came out fine, so of course something else had to happen. And it was a doozy.

Last night J decreed that the top shelf of the fridge would be for drinks only because it's too hard to shuffle things around when you're trying to get the milk from the back. A good decree. I had a mostly full can of beef broth and foolishly thought it counted as a drink, and put it on the top shelf. Mere moments later, I went to put the milk back and while holding a full glass of it in my other hand. I had to shuffle to get around the beef broth and it went flying, coating the entire fridge with beef fluid as well as the floor within a two foot radius. It's... it's all over everything. I mopped it up as best I could but I have a feeling that everything I eat for the next few weeks is going to taste strangely beefy....

Applesauce

I've been wanting to make applesauce for years and haven't mustered the guts. My mom even found me an apple smasher on ebay last year, but the whole idea seemed so intimidating. It turns out it's so easy and I'm never going to stop doing it.

I used Spartan apples for this inaugural batch and it's quite tasty. It's going to be a good winter.

My favourite part is how plainly natural it is. Just apples and cinnamon. Mmmmmmmmmm

Bowl  courtesy of Jackie Seton

Fathers Day Bumblebee Cake

Tada!