Category Archives: Food

Chicken and ducklings

I have a certain in-law who, since childhood, has enjoyed eating “chicken and ducklings,” a dish perhaps better known as chicken and dumplings.  Being vegetarian, my version of this dish contains neither chicken nor ducklings, but it’s packed with tons of flavor, protein, and other goodness to warm you from the inside out.

As you’ll see, the recipe is just a starting point.  You could make the dumplings and add them to just about any broth-y vegetable soup, and it would be delicious.  Last night, Matthew made our Country Vegetable Soup using dumplings instead of pasta.

Chicken and duckling soup
Recipe by Melissa

Ingredients
1 c. orange lentils*
4-5 c. water
6c. veggie broth (can subs. water and extra spices)
bay leaf
thyme, marjoram, oregano, cumin (season to taste)
olive oil
1-2 c. onion and/or leeks
1 bulb garlic
2-4 stalks of celery
2 c. carrots or sweet potatoes or butternut squash
3-4 c. cabbage (it will cook down!)
optional other veggies — see directions for ideas
1 recipe Bean Flour Ducklings Dumplings (recipe below)

Directions
Place lentils and bay leaf in large pot and cover with water.  Bring to a boil and turn down to simmer.  You may need to check back and add more water or broth as they cook.

Chop your veggies.  The ingredient list is just a starting point.  You can add or subtract veggies as you wish.  Green beans, potatoes, frozen corn, and/or frozen peas work well here, too.

If you haven’t already made the dumpling batter, make it now.

Saute onion/leeks and celery in olive oil until tender, about 10 minutes.  Add garlic and saute for an additional minute.  Add herbs and spices to the mix.

Check on lentils.  When they are starting to fall apart, add the sauteed mix, along with the other chopped veggies**, and more water or stock to the lentil pot.  Bring back to a boil, and then lower to a simmer.  If using water or no-sodium broth, you will need to add salt.  Start with 1 t. and add more to taste.

Once all veggies are in the pot, drop in dumpling batter by the spoonful.  You will need enough extra broth in the pot for the dumplings.  If your pot is too full, you can cook the dumplings in a separate pot of broth.  Cover pot and cook dumplings for 15 minutes.

Serve, let cool a bit so you don’t burn your mouth, and enjoy!

*Split and hulled, these tiny lentils break down very quickly and will dissolve, creating a thick, rich base for the soup.
**For ideal veggie cookage, start by adding the veggies that take longer to cook, like potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, etc.  Let simmer for 10-15 minutes, then add tender veggies, like cabbage and green beans.  Many frozen veggies can be added right at the end of cooking, and they’ll help cool the soup for eating.

Rides and eats

Strangely enough, I’ve done more biking in the past 3 1/2 weeks (late December and early January), than in all of September, October, and November combined.  The rides themselves have been relatively short (3-4 miles), running errands here and there, but just getting out somewhat regularly feels great.

On Saturday morning, I ran a couple of errands by car, due to some remaining ice from the mid-week snow.  Once off of our tiny street, I realized conditions were bikeable.  When I arrived at the library and found no [car] parking spaces, I really wished I’d chosen two wheels instead of four — lesson learned!

While out and about, I stopped by the winter farmers’ market.  Some beautiful cabbage, along with a few bags of frozen green bell peppers, a couple of fresh sweet red peppers, and a few pears made the trip well worth it.  I bought enough cabbage that we might do a new round of sauerkraut, though we’ve really been enjoying the cabbage cooked in various ways, and I want to get around to making a slaw/salad with some of it.  Cold weather cabbage tastes so sweet and delicious!

Speaking of sauerkraut, and deliciousness, we made reubens over the weekend — so messy and so good!  The kitchen’s been a busy place lately, and I have a couple of fun new recipes to share soon, one for a nice, warm soup and the other for an amazing bread — very high quality bike fuel 🙂

Pumpkin lasagna

Two months ago, I wrote about an amazing pumpkin lasagna that we Matthew made, wherein I promised a recipe “soon,” and left you hanging.  Soon has come and gone, but we recreated the lasagna for our New Year’s Eve meal, making [an almost] vegan version to accommodate my current dairy-free diet.

We originally made an only-slightly-adapted version, using some cashew butter, but retaining the cream and Parmesan cheese.  The recipe here is vegan, except for our homemade noodles, which contain eggs.  Once again, we benefited from having homegrown Swiss chard and squash prepped (from the deep freeze this time), as well as the noodles made up from a previous night.

Happy cooking and eating!

Pumpkin Lasagna
By Matthew
Adapted from Food & Wine

Ingredients (makes 8 very generous servings, or 12 smaller portions)
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 ½ cups onions, chopped
2 pounds Swiss chard, washed well and chopped
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
2 Tablespoons sage
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
6 cups pumpkin (or any winter squash) puree (or two large cans)
9 amaretti cookies, crumbled
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1  cup bread crumb topping (see recipe below)
1/2 cup cashew butter
3/4 cup warm water
1/2 cup soymilk
1 recipe homemade spelt pasta cut into angel ribbon lasagna (or 9 whole wheat no bake lasagna noodles)
 

Directions
In a large cast iron or nonstick frying pan, heat the oil over moderately low heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent, about 5 minutes. Increase the heat to moderately high and add the chard, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, 1 Tablespoon sage, and 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg. Cook, stirring, until the chard is wilted and no liquid remains in the pan, 5 to 10 minutes.

Combine the cashew butter and warm water to create a cashew sauce.

Heat the oven to 400°. In a medium bowl, mix together 6 cups of the pumpkin, amaretti cookie crumbles, cashew sauce (from previous step), and the remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, 1 teaspoon, pepper, 1 Tablespoon sage, and 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg.

Pour the soymilk into a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Top the soymilk with one
third of the noodles, then spread 1/3 of the pumpkin mixture over the noodles. Layer half the Swiss chard over the pumpkin and top with a second layer of noodles. Repeat with another layer of pumpkin, Swiss chard, and noodles.

Spread the remaining pumpkin mixture evenly over the top of the lasagne, and sprinkle with the bread crumb topping.  Cover with a cookie sheet on a higher oven rack and bake for 20 minutes. Uncover and bake until golden, about 15 minutes more. Let cool, to set up, for 10 minutes before cutting.

Bread crumb topping
I created this topping as a substitute for the Parmesan cheese in the original recipe.  It came out quite well.

Ingredients
2/3 c. whole wheat bread crumbs
1/3 c. wheat germ
1/3 c. nutritional yeast
1/2 t. garlic powder
1/3 c. vegan butter substitute, like Earth Balance

Directions
Combine dry ingredients in a bowl.  Use a pastry blender to cut in the Earth Balance, creating a crumbly mixture that you can sprinkle on top of the lasagna.


2011 Year End Review — The First Half

Pregnancy, international travel, major surgery, and a new baby, all superimposed on the usual topics of biking, food, and gardening.  Here’s a look back at 2011.

Already increasing my carbon footprint
I mean that in a very loving and motherly way, of course :)  The big changes won’t come for another six months or so . . . .

Little did I know exactly how big those changes would be.

Seed starting: Make a functional, affordable heat box
I’ve used this one with great success and reliability for four sets of plants now.  We set our thermostat pretty low in the winter, so the heat box helps keep the seeds cozy.

Mama-to-be’s reading list
Your Best Birth, by Rikki Lake and Abby Epstein, was the first book I read post finding out that I was pregnant, and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.  Even if you are not pregnant, have no plans to become pregnant, and can’t see any way this subject applies to you, I encourage you to read it . . .

Turns out, no amount of reading can prepare you for life with a baby.

Good sauerkraut — make your own
Yesterday, I wrote about my hunt for good sauerkraut and how we ultimately decided to make our own.  Fortunately, making sauerkraut is quite simple.

O-oooh, we’re halfway theeere

21 weeks

Brine your beans
While I was happy enough with my bean-cooking method (quick soak or an overnight soak, drain and rinse, boil for about an hour), we recently discovered a new method that yields delicious, lightly salted cooked beans, reminiscent of the canned variety in a good way.

Biking with babies
The idea that a young infant could not be safely transported by bicycle, when we give no thought to putting them in cars, seemed quite ludicrous to me, but I couldn’t find much information on safe options.

There’s no place like home
All of the sudden, I look significantly more pregnant.  So what changed?  Turns out I’m having twins — my regular baby, plus an Italian food baby.

Traveling while pregnant

In London, I could count on relatively easy restroom access when out-and-about by ducking into a Starbucks or McDonalds.  I became accustomed to walking in, quickly scoping out the place and the most likely restroom location, and making my way there, and back out, without making it too obvious that I wasn’t a paying customer.  Italy was trickier on the restroom front.

Eating for two — A vegetarian pregnancy
Not having to scramble to make dietary changes when I found out I was pregnant was one nice aspect of having a well-established healthy diet, though I was a little worried for the few weeks where pasta and rice noodles made up the bulk of my diet.

Cycling Savvy Instructor!
Despite the heat and my “delicate condition” ;) , I made it through the Cycling Savvy Instructor training this past weekend!  In fact, I didn’t just make it, I had a great time.

Biking with baby — Part II
Comments such as, “If you and your husband want to go for a bike ride, leave your baby with a sitter,”  reveal general ignorance about using a bicycle for transportation. What if we want to go to an event in the park WITH the baby?  What if I need to pick something up at the grocery store?  Am I confined to only using my car for these short, easily bikeable trips for the first 12 months unless I leave baby behind?

Rolling toward the finish

Biking to lunch at 37 weeks

Garden goods

Despite the craziness of having a baby in the middle of the summer, we managed to have a great year garden-wise.  Understandably, my involvement in the actual gardening, and in putting up the food, was even more limited than usual.  I just sat on my butt all day cared for a very demanding baby and enjoyed eating the garden’s bounty.  We canned some green beans, and my mother-in-law canned tons of tomatoes and froze lots of other veggies for us.

Last week, we made one of our favorite soups, Country Vegetable Soup with Pasta, almost entirely with garden goods, including fresh tomatoes in mid-December (picked green before the frost in early November, and ripened slowly inside since then).

Homegrown goods in our soup included leeks, tomatoes (fresh, not canned), onion, celery, sweet potatoes (subbed for carrots in the recipe, because that’s what we had), green beans (from frozen), and basil (also frozen) for the pesto.  We didn’t have any zucchini, so we just subbed more of the other veggies. Hearty and delicious, and so fun to have grown almost all of the ingredients!

In the end, the only non-garden item in the soup, other than the pasta, was the garlic.  We had a nice garlic harvest, but at the rate we go through garlic, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to grow enough (though Matthew’s working on it 🙂 ).