Wednesday Fan Art!

It appears that this week will be even more a wash than I thought, in terms of cooking -- my dinner plans got moved to tomorrow, but I got home so late after a meeting, I just couldn't handle cooking.  So, Mu had Indian leftovers and I had meatballs from the freezer, and no cooking is happening.  So it goes.  I can't really stress about that kind of thing, I have plenty to stress about as it is.  However, I do have more fan art from Cindy!  She was, for whatever reason, very amused by part of my post about the sweet potato fries. :)

The fries all look so pleased with themselves!

So, at this point, it looks like no more cooking is happening this week.  Tomorrow is dinner with my friends, and Friday we leave for LA for the weekend.  Hopefully, I'll have a link dump post in there somewhere, and then the cooking will actually resume on Monday.

Wednesday fan art!

Cindy and I decided that Wednesday would be the best day for fan art.  It's been happening on Wednesdays by accident anyways, and it's a nice mid-week pick-me-up.  So, here is the art for this week: a happy fluffy matzoh ball (and some vague-looking matzah)!

Isn't it so happy?

So, today was going to be paneer day, but I'm changing the schedule slightly.  Paneer takes a while to actually happen, and while it's almost entirely hands-off time, it's still something to keep an eye on.  Plus, I now have dinner plans for tomorrow, so it kinda didn't make sense to make it today and be unable to cook with it for an extra day.  Instead, I'll make it tomorrow (start it before dinner and finish when I come back home) and on Friday night, I'll make saag paneer with it.  It'll work out better that way.  Well, that, and I started biking to school yesterday, and now my body does not want me to do anything but sit. :)

Cooking, recipe 7 and Tuesday Tip (and the start of a new tradition?)

Since I knew I wasn't going to cook today, I saved yesterday's post for today.  And then realized I didn't have a photo of yesterday's recipe, mostly because I was feeling cranky and totally forgot.  But that's ok, because we have fanart again!  In fact, Cindy and I have decided that this should be a weekly tradition (though I just realized we haven't decided what day it should be, but that's ok).  In fact, today's picture is a warning: if you don't like the idea of weekly fanart, an elephant wizard might make you stick your head in a mushroom.  Like so:

 

I hope none of you meet this awful fate. :)

A note about the mushroom stock from the other day: it's really mushroomy! This is a good thing, but it also means that I wouldn't add this stock to a random soup unless I specifically wanted mushroom flavor.  I knew this when I was making the stock, but it's probably worth mentioning.

Anyways, yesterday, I went and made a bigger batch of food again.  On one hand, it's probably good, since I won't be cooking today and tomorrow.  On the other hand, dude, I'm really incapable of making reasonably-sized things.  In my defense, I had 4 portobellos I hadn't used, and I didn't want them to go bad! So there we are.  I also started a freezer bag of trimmings in order to make veggie stock sometime next week.  We'll see how that goes.  The recipe itself was pretty easy and didn't take a whole lot of attention, which allowed me to make the now-weekly batch of salad for this week while I was waiting for dinner to finish.

Quinoa with mushrooms, greens, and chili

Ingredients

1 cup of quinoa

2 cups of mushroom stock (or veggie stock or water)

1 onion

4 portobello caps (reserve the stems for stock if you want)

2 broccoli bunches (apparently, broccoli stems aren't good for stock, though)

4-5 medium tomatoes

1 bunch beet greens (this is the first time I used the greens before the beets!)

neutral oil

salt, pepper, and chili powder

In a medium pot, combine quinoa and stock.  Bring to a boil, then adjust the heat so that the mixture simmers. Cover and cook until the liquid is gone, 15-20 minutes.  Set aside when it's done.  In the meantime, chop up an onion.  Heat a little bit of oil over medium-high heat and when it's hot, put in the onion.  Saute 'till tender, 3-5 minutes. Chop up the portobellos and add them.  Cook for about 10 minutes, 'till the mushrooms have given up juices and started browning.  Chop up the greens, broccoli and tomatoes and add them at this point. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and add a bit of water.  Cover and cook until broccoli is tender, 15ish minutes. Uncover, add chili powder to taste, and cook until most of the liquid has cooked off.  Stir in the quinoa, adjust seasonings to taste, and cook for a few minutes to integrate everything. 

Recipe summary
Time: About an hour, of which about 20 minutes is hands-on
Serves: 6-8
Highlights/thoughts: Nice and easy recipe -- you can add pretty much any vegetables and have it turn out well.  It also helps to cook the quinoa in stock of some kind rather than water.  Water is fine, but stock really adds a nice flavor to the whole thing.
Would I make this again?  Definitely, though probably not with identical veggies, since I don't necessarily have portobellos on hand.

And, in relationship to the recipe, here's the Tuesday Tip.  It turns out that chili powder is instant yummy!  I was cooking this and feeling meh in general, and the veggies were turning out pretty meh, despite adding salt and pepper.  I stared at my spice rack for a while and decided, randomly, to add some chili powder.  I specifically used Penzey's Chili 9000, which is a blend, but I think straight-up chili powder would work just as well.  It instantly added a nice flavor and kick and really brought the dish together.  Yay!

Giving myself a break, and more fanart!

Amusingly, after my post yesterday about how the cooking every day thing may not be working, I've stumbled across a number of posts on blogs I read about this same thing -- how, in order to make cooking a sustainable endeavor, one needs to pace oneself, allow for nights out or "freezer" nights, and generally give oneself a break.  I'll link to my favorite of the posts tomorrow (part of the reason it's my favorite is that it encourages going out to dinner on Thursday or Friday, teehee!).

Also, I realized that I really didn't take Passover into account with my menu plans.  I can't do portobello panini on Friday unless it's for lunch and has no leftovers, since panini is bread!  And I can't do pasta tonight unless we're sure to finish it before sundown tomorrow.  I really didn't think this through, did I?  So, the latest plan is that I will not cook tonight (sushi, hooray!), and I'll make portobellos with quinoa tomorrow to use up the rest of the portobellos.  I still have a bunch of mushrooms left over, but they're actually the perfect amount for making mushroom stock, which I want to try next week.  And I'm still planning to do matzah ball soup on Saturday for second-night Seder, so I actually will have accomplished 7 recipes this week, despite the break.

So, I'm thinking that for the rest of the month, I will aim for the same number of recipes, but fewer days.  It's more feasible for me to cook a main and a side on a couple of the days, just a main on several others, and not at all on one or two more.  Mid-week is particularly hard, and next week, I have evening commitments on both Tuesday and Wednesday.  Hopefully, this modified goal will help me feel like I'm still taking on this challenge without feeling burnt out.

Finally, the totally awesome Cindy has provided more fan art!  Why?  She says, "Because it seemed like the scrunchiness of the mushrooms was important, and yet lacked a scientific guide."  So, here is a practical guide to how scrunched cooked portobello steaks should be!

Tuesday Tip (request) and more fanart!

Cindy has drawn me more fanart!  The backstory here is that when she and I were talking about spaghetti squash recipes, I suddenly remembered that I didn't just have one squash, I had a second, smaller squash hiding in the fridge.  Cindy declared that it must be evil (because it was hiding?  I'm not sure now), I agreed, and now we have this:

It's laughing at unsuspecting kale and beet greens

In other news, I'm trying to get myself organized for my upcoming month of cooking.  I do a lot of recipe reading, on blogs but also offline, in cookbooks and magazines, so I'm going to need to compile a list of things I'd like to try.  I've set aside some time over this week to do so, because I'm afraid that if I don't do it ahead of time, it'll feel overwhelming when I actually get into April and have to think of things to cook daily.  I'm also trying to have a few themes so that I can maximize ingredient usage.  So far, the themes are mushrooms, Indian (I'm thinking of changing this to Asian, though, since I don't think I want to eat Indian every day for a week), and (maybe) molecular gastronomy, though I suspect a full week of that will get old.  Passover is in April, too, so I'll have 10 days of gluten-free stuff by default.  I'm excited about this endeavor!

Today's Tuesday Tip is actually a tip request.  What do you make when your "cooking mojo" is off? I've had a couple of recipes not turn out the way I want, and I'm trying to ease myself back in before April hits.  Any suggestions for something that would be easy and relatively fail-proof?

We have fan art!

I don't have a whole lot to talk about today -- we're leaving for the weekend, so I haven't cooked.  But yesterday, Cin sent me this adorable picture, so I just had to share it!  It's an elephant wizard campaigning for beet greens!  I'm very excited, if you couldn't tell.  It's so cute!  I want it on a shirt. :) 

I do have plans to cook this weekend, at least a little.  I'll be making a crustless spinach and mushroom quiche for my mom.  I don't want to buy a crust, it seems like cheating, but I also have no desire to make my own.  Oh, and I need to figure out what to do with a spaghetti squash!  We got 2 from the CSA, which means I'll have to do something with them when we return.  I've never had spaghetti squash, much less cooked with one!  Tips, anyone?