Ode to the Humble Pea

Most folks with kids come to appreciate the humble pea as it's an easy food to cook (from frozen) and most kids enjoy this cute, round finger food. Personally I hated peas until I moved out on my own because I'd only encountered them in their canned incarnation. Like most moms in the 70s, my mom only served vegetables that came from a can, so I thought that all peas were mushy and a sickly, grey-green colour.

But at our house, we love our peas which are fresh from the pod in the summer and fresh from the freezer the rest of the year. Frozen foods have come a long way in recent years and they're generally picked at the peak of ripeness and flash-frozen which preserves most of their vitamins and minerals. And because peas are so often "right there" in the freezer, just 3 minutes and a pot of boiling water away from being ready-to-eat, they make their way into lots of dishes.

I encourage you to consider adding peas to your meals, for an extra dab of fibre, protein and vitamins. If you've already got a main with a starch, a protein and a veggie side, you could add in peas to bump up the veggie factor. Here are some ways to incorporate peas into your meals:

- add to green salads

- add to pasta salad (try rotini, chicken, grape tomatoes and peas)

- add to creamy pasta dishes (e.g. shells, baby shrimp and peas)

- adding green peas to boxed macaroni and cheees bumps up the veggie quotient but still serve another vegetable on the side

- add to stews (in the last 5 minutes)

- add to soups (even canned veggie, chicken noodle)

This last suggestion we do frequently, and I love the way peas add colour and thickness to pureed soups. Go to your favourite recipe site, such as recipezaar.com or epicurious.com, and type in 'peas' and you won't believe how many interesting recipes pop up. Eat your peas today!

Mmm...Snuggie

This is not a post about food. This is a post about my latest fashion favourite. Call it a gown for Recessionary Times. A "little black dress" for the eco-conscious, if you will.

This is me pictured above in my Snuggie. It's cozy and warm, makes me happy, and enables me to keep the thermostat turned down in our leaky old house. It may not be sexy, but then I don't plan on wearing it anywhere. I suppose you could go for the zebra or leopard pattern if you wanted to mince around the house looking mysterious. And it looks like anything goes at those Snuggie Parties. Call me a bore, but I'm not taking this baby into the great outdoors. I'm too afraid that harm might come its way: it might get stained, or torn. It's not even fire-retardant, poor thing.

I love my Snuggie! It's a baby blanket for adults. I just hope I'll be able to get a new one before it disintegrates from overuse, like my childhood blankie did. Poor Boodie....

Hallowe'en Party

11/02/2009,
originally uploaded by follepourchocolat.

We had a Hallowe'en party this past weekend and I made gingerbread pumpkin cookies, vegetable macaroni and cheese and a veggie tray with dip. I was planning on sharing the recipe, but the truth is, I didn't keep track of what I did.

Baked Mac n' Cheese with Veggie Sauce

- Cook some whole grain macaroni according to package directions; drain in colander

- At same time, place a mixture of vegetables in a pot and just cover them with water. Bring to a boil. I used leek, broccoli stems, carrots, and some cauliflower.

- Boil until tender, about 15 minutes; let cool

- Puree vegetable mixture in your blender, reserving a bit of the water and add milk. It should be quite thick, not watery. Add vegetable water if it's too thick (i.e. you cannot pour it)

- Place macaroni back into pot you used to boil it

- Pour the vegetable puree over the macaroni and mix it in with a spoon. Add 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, or less.

- Put pasta into a buttered glass baking pan; sprinkle with 1 cup (or less) of shredded cheese of your preference

- Cover with foil and place into an oven at 400F

- Bake for 20 minutes, then remove foil. Bake until cheese topping bubbles.

- Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

The kids loved this dish and so did the adults, with everyone being quite surprised when they learned it was chock full of veggies. Yummy, good cold weather food. Oh! and the pumpkin cookies were a hit too....

Read Labels and Don't Be Duped

I can't say enough how important it is to read labels now that every supermarket chain has its own branded "healthy food" line. Twice now I've come home with a product I grabbed off a shelf because I assumed it was good for us because the label told me it was.

The first was a President's Choice Blue Menu cracker; the other a Safeway Eating Right fig newton. When I finally read the labels, each of these foods had sugar listed as the first ingredient, before flour. That means that there was more sugar in the product than flour. I've followed a lot of cookie recipes over the years, but not even the sweetest one contained more sugar than flour. And why a fig newton cookie needs that much sugar is a mystery: figs are incredibly sweet on their own.

Companies are taking advantage of our trust and our lack of time in the grocery store aisles to sell us food that will do more harm than good. If you avoid processed food altogether, you won't get taken in, because most of these foods are processed and packaged to look like homemade, wholesome foods. But instead they are made with cheap ingredients (sugar, white flour) with a few healthy ingredients thrown in (e.g. flax seed) to make us think that the foods are good for us.

I encourage everyone to stick to your instincts about what's good for you and your family and take the time to read food labels. Just because a package looks like it contains a healthy item, does not mean it actually will. Apparently the FDA is planning to put pressure on companies who use coercive marketing and packaging to dress up unhealthy choices as healthy ones. They are looking into enforcing national labelling standards that will make it easier for consumers to pick the right foods. Don't expect to see them steering consumers away from sugar anytime soon though. Sugar still manages to avoid any medical blacklists, but that is due to change in the future.

Knowledge is definitely power, and what's more powerful than being in control of every thing you put into your body for fuel? Do yourself a favour and spend time finding out what's in the food you buy and eat.

Dish of the Day: Spinach Artichoke Dip

In Vancouver, there are several restuarants that offer spinach and artichoke heart dip as an appetiser. They serve it with those fried nacho chips and I think they refry them before bringing the dish to the table because they always seem extra greasy.

One of these restaurants published their recipe years ago and I haven't ordered this dish ever since. Turns out that mayonnaise and butter are the main ingredients, as well as a lot of shredded cheese. Yummy....but a bit hard on the digestion, and who needs that much fat at one sitting?

I've asked my old friend ricotta cheese to stand in as the main ingredient in this delicious, cold weather appetiser. Ricotta is a relatively low fat cheese and it's still very light, high in protein and incredibly versatile. You can buy ricotta in low fat versions if you like, but I'm not keen on overly processed dairy foods.

Recipe for Spinach Artichoke Dip

- Take one block of frozen chopped spinach and prepare according to package instructions (usually, you boil it in a small amount of salted water for a few minutes)

- Dump the cooked spinach into a sieve, or colander and squeeze out all the water, or your dish will be watery

- Take 2 small jars of artichoke hearts (1 used one large can 398 ml) and also put them into the colander to remove all the water, or oil in which they were sitting

- Chop up artichoke hearts into smaller pieces if desired, and remove any woody pieces

- Generously butter a small oven-ready dish (I used an 8 x 8 square pan); go all the way up sides and edges

- Dump into your baking dish the contents of a 500 ml tub of ricotta cheese

- Now add the spinach and artichokes and mix well with a fork

- Stir in 2 Tbsp mayonnaise or sour cream and 1 Tbsp olive oil to make for a creamier consistency

- Add in a few shakes of salt and pepper and a pinch of cayenne pepper if you like a bit of spice

- Finally, add in 1/2 cup of shredded cheese (white cheddar, edam or gouda)

- Cover dish with aluminum foil and place in over at 375 for 20 minutes

- Remove the foil, crank oven up to 425 and cook for 5 more minutes

- Then turn oven to broil and watch your dish until cheese starts to brown

- Remove from oven and let sit for 5 minutes before serving. If you're eating with people who are related to you, or very good friends, eat right from the dish with tortilla chips, preferably a baked or multigrain kind. I served this with open-faced salmon sandwiches.

This dish can be reheated and really should serve 4 people at least 2 times. This is why you've buttered all edges of the pan to prevent ingredients from burning and sticking.

Dish of the Day: Turkey Roast

Happy Thanksgiving!! This year we were a wee group of 6 diners with small appetites, and we're not big fans of turkey. I find that the white meat especially can be quite dry. There was also no way we'd make a dent in a big turkey, so I decided to try and cook a turkey roast, which I believe is when you take a turkey breast and stuff it, twine it and roast it in the oven.

As you can see above, it looked beautiful en route to the oven, but more importantly it tasted delectable. I'm attributing that to the extra special step of brining the turkey beforehand. The recipe which I loosely followed is this one. I made my own stuffing with whatever we had around the house: raisins, apples, onion, whole wheat bread, butter and chicken stock. I bought fresh sage for the occasion.

What did we serve with this, you ask? Peas and French green beans. Sadly I don't have a photo of the turkey after it was cooked because we gobbled it all up. But from now on, I will always brine a turkey. It's fast and easy and makes the meat moist and delicious. Highly recommended!

The Deadly Burger Deconstructed

I like a good burger. And one of the best that I know is at my parents' house in Central Ontario. My parents have a hobby farm with assorted animals including some grass-fed cows. Each year they take one cow to the tiny, nearby slaughterhouse to be killed and they eat it in a variety of ways: ribeye, sirloin, as well as some that gets ground for burgers. This meat is dark red and delicious. It needs no more seasoning than a shake of salt and pepper.

I could go on and on about this splendid meal, but in reality, I rarely get to enjoy this. My parents live thousands of kilometres away, and they are very lucky to be able to eat fresh local food. They can purchase eggs and chickens from Mennonite neighbours, and they have plenty of land for a vegetable garden in the summer. Whereas I must make do with my 3' x 10' urban garden and like most folks, I rely on what I can source at a restaurant or at my local supermarket. Since most North Americans get most of their food from a store, meat eaters in particular are eating food which has been processed and packaged by people whom they will never meet.

Which brings me to this article documenting the horrible illness a young woman endured several days after she ate a hamburger infected with E. Coli. She is now paralysed from the waist down. One of her low points was having the doctors put her into a coma for nine weeks to try and stop her violent and endless convulsions. The article uncovers the cause of her illness and traces back all the mishandled situations, oversights and red tape that lay behind the tainted meat. The story gathers up all the bits of meat and other ingredients scraped together to make her hamburger patty, for which the packaging listed only one thing: beef.

The cause of this woman's needless tragedy is simple economics. Cargill (the maker the frozen beef patties), like other large food producers, wants to be a very profitable company. The best way to achieve that is through mass-production and lowering the cost of raw materials and processing methods. The result is that many low-quality meat bits are added together to make a patty, some having been in contact with feces. With such high volume production runs and so many sources of raw ingredients, and other issues like insufficient time to clean equipment, staff do not take the time to properly inspect the patties for pathogens. But that doesn't stop this food from being shipped to grocery stores so they can be purchased by you or me.

Knowing what goes on in the processing factory means that each time you buy frozen patties from a large food corporation, you're taking a low risk gamble that you might eat infected meat. Many of us know that healthier foods are those which are as unprocessed as possible. These are the natural foods which we were designed to eat and they have been touched by few hands and machines, and so we assume they have a lower chance of being infected. These foods may be our safest bet. Because few of us are lucky enough to be able to eat our own beef, to buy the chickens from the lady down the street, or even to eat fruits and vegetables from our own garden.

Each time we go to the grocery store, we must make an informed choice. I know I'm not going to be choosing any ground beef or frozen patties anytime soon. And I will continue to ask lots of questions of my store's butcher and of the companies who try to sell me their products. It's our health at stake and we have the right to know before we hand over our money, or put our health on the line.

Dish of the Day: Pumpkin Cookies

Yummy!

Fall is definitely here and to our family that means: Bring on Da Pumpkins! We adore pumpkins and squashes in lots of foods, albeit dessert-y ones. Pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin muffins and scones. We can't get enough pumpkin!

The pumpkin cookie pictured above is a new recipe I've modified which contains a lot more pumpkin than you normally find in a cookie. Often pumpkin cookies contain lots of sugar, are sometimes iced, and contain twice as much flour as pumpkin. This recipe has almost the same amount of pumpkin as flour. Also, I've used some orange juice concentrate to reduce the amount of sugar used. And I use whole sugar such as Rapadura, jaggery or Sucanut, such as this for example.

Very Pumpkin-y Cookies

1/4 cup butter or coconut oil

2 Tbsp juice concentrate at room temp (melted)

1/2 cup whole sugar

1 egg at room temp

1 tsp vanilla, or dark rum

2/3 cup pumpkin

1 cup sifted spelt flour

2 tsps baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 and 1/2 tsps cinnamon

1 tsp ground cardamom (if you like it)

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp ginger

1/2 cup raisins

In a large bowl, cream butter and then add sugar. Cream until light and fluffy.

Beat in egg and then vanilla and pumpkin; mix well.

Sift flour, baking powder, salt and spices together. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix until blended.

Add raisins. Place Tablespoon-sized balls onto greased cookie sheets. Bake at 350 F for 12-15 minutes.

Makes about 18 cookies.

Dish of the Day: Chicken n Rice in the Oven

Tonight I was again bored and feeling uncreative. I had some chicken and that was about it. It was time to search the fridge for leftovers and see how a meal for 4 could be constructed. What I came up with was a saucy baked chicken recipe with rice and leafy greens. Here's how it came together:

- I grabbed some kale from the garden, washed and shredded it and placed in an oven-ready dish with some leftover brown rice.
- I mixed the two together so they were evenly distributed throughout the dish.
- I then took last night's delicious Moroccan Soup, and mixed it with about a cup of chicken broth.
- Meanwhile I was searing the chicken breast and then chopped it up and placed it on the rice mixture.
- Next I poured the soup/broth sauce over everything and ensured that all the kale and chicken was covered in sauce.
- This was placed in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes with aluminum foil on top to keep the heat in.
- I removed the foil, put some shredded cheese on top of the now bubbling dish, turned off the oven and left the dish in for 5 more minutes.
- The dish stood for 5 more minutes on a cooling rack and then we tucked in.

In the photo above, you can see we had a salad on the side. Not a bad meal for being unplanned and using up leftovers.

Dish of the Day: My Green Soup Rocks the House

Okay, so that's a small exaggeration. But the kale that made it green IS such an amazing vegetable and I want to shout it from the rooftops. It's easy to cook with, delicious and nutritious. And you can do it too.

Yesterday I made us all green soup. We were travelling in the US a few days ago and we really needed a burst of fresh vegetables, to combat all that rich, takeout food. I took a pile of leftover vegetables from the fridge, chopped them up, threw them in a pot and covered them with water. Boiled for 10 minutes then cooled them, blended them and reheated and served. Delish!

Here's the recipe, of sorts:

- chop up garlic and onions and add to pot

- chop your vegetables into dice-sized pieces (I used zucchini, kale, carrots, potatoes)

- just cover with water (you want a 1:1 ratio of water to vegetables)

- boil for 10 minutes maximum

- remove from stove and add 1 or 2 vegetable bouillon cubes

- let cool for 10 - 15 minutes

- puree in blender until mixture is completely blended

--> if you use a leafy green your soup will be a vibrant green!

- put pot back on the stove and reheat

- add in 1 or 2 Tbsp of virgin olive oil

- if soup is too watery, simmer for 10 minutes to evaporate extra water

- if soup is too thick, add water or milk or yogurt to make it more creamy

- serve with fresh ground pepper or herbs from the garden

Make yourselves some green soup today and get healthy. I think you'll find this is a quick and easy way to get your vitamins and minerals.