Roasted veggies with seasoned tofu

We are straddling two seasons as the root veggies start softening up, storage onions start sprouting greens and the fresh asparagus begins arriving from just a little south of us. For me, a meal is especially pleasing that has qualities of warmth and coolness, color and texture. This meal met all those aspects plus it came together simply. I steamed fresh asparagus in the last 10 minutes that the food in the oven was uncovered, and the kale salad softened the whole time the veggies roasted. I have to admit that my husband and I ate nearly all of this in one dinner, but adding an additional beet, sweet potato and a couple onions (or parsnips) this could feed 4 people! You can also double the tofu.

Roasted Veggies (bakes 1 hour)

Set oven to 350F

3 beets

2 carrots

1 sweet potato 

4 cippolini onions

teaspoon Herbes de Provence

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)

tsp olive oil optional

Scrub, peel and cut into medium, similar sized pieces. Place on tin foil in a baking pan - I prefer cast iron enamel to distribute the heat, but use what you have. Sprinkle the herbs, salt, pepper and oil (if you are using any), cover with another sheet of foil and place in oven. Set the timer for 40 minutes.

Kale salad

Use one good sized bunch of any kale you like - choosing moderate sized tender leaves.  We like curly and lacinato especially for this. Tear the leaf off the stem and tear into reasonabe edible pieces - not longer than your fingers or wider than your hand. Wash and spin dry. Place leaves in a fairly large bowl ( they do compact but start out needing space). In a separate bowl, mix together the dressing:

 1/2 c tarragon vinegar,

 1-2 Tblspn of a second vinegar like pomegranate or balsamic, 

add 2 cloves finely chopped garlic 

about 1/2 tsp salt. 

Smooth this dressing into the kale leaves, gently bruising the leaves and rubbing around to spread the dressing into all the pieces. Refrigerate while everything else cooks - smooshing  the leaves once more 10 minutes before serving (just about when you take the foil off the veggies).

Seasoned tofu

Cut a block of firm tofu into 6 short thick slices. Set out a bowl to soak them in. In a second bowl mix the mustard marinade:

1.5 Tblspn spicy mustard (your favorite)

1tsp Braggs Liquid Amino

1tsp tamari 

1/2 tsp ume plum vinegar

2tsp maple syrup

1Tblspn chili sauce (you could use ketchup with a little horseradish and vinegar added)

A shake of sriracha sauce

Pour this over the tofu and stir gently to cover all the surfaces.

After a few minutes, tip the bowl and recoat the surfaces with the sauce. Then add:

5 chopped shiitake mushrooms

2 chopped scallions

Let this sit, stir once or twice.

When the timer goes off, take the foil off the veggies, stir them gently and push them towards the edges if the pan. Put the seasoned tofu mixture into the center of the pan, spreading it so the tofu doesn't overlap too much. Cover with the foil and set the timer for 10 minutes.

When the timer goes off, take the covering off the baking pan and set the timer for the last 10 minutes. Steam the asparagus in that 19 minutes.

Enjoy!

Spaghetti Squash with Anytime Fresh Tomato Sauce

The bowl on our early November table has two pale tomatoes waiting to turn into something resembling summer tomatoes. The farm markets continue to offer beautiful cool weather greens and winter squash in every variety. So the dinner plan formed around a round lovely spaghetti squash, and my husband suggested that a fresh tomato sauce would be lovely. "Fresh tomato sauce?" I thought looking at him sideways.  Then I remembered my strategy at summer's end -- I had thrown piles of ripe plum tomatoes into plastic freezer bags and plopped them into the freezer. I use these in soups and chili and they taste as fresh as summer. As soon as the cold tomato hits the heat of the broth or whatever, the peelings pop right off, leaving just the succulence of the tomato. Of course they turn to mush -- but isn't that what we want in a sauce? So this evolved into another instant favorite -- sweet spaghetti squash well saturated with fresh tomato, garlic, slivered kale leaves and herbes de Provence. Oooh la la! This is a beautiful dish that takes less than an hour to make fresh.


SPAGHETTI SQUASH WITH ANYTIME FRESH TOMATO SAUCE

1 medium large spaghetti squash
6-10 cloves fresh garlic roughly chopped
8 or so fresh-frozen plum tomatoes (you could use a can I suppose)
5-8 medium kale leaves, destemmed
1/2-3/4 c water
1/2 - 1 tsp salt (your taste...)
1 TBLSP herbes de Provence
Freshly ground pepper
Sesame seed gomasio (if you want to imitate a finishing sprinkle on top)

FIRST BAKE THE SQUASH:
Heat the oven to 350F. Cut the spaghetti squash in half length-wise (from stem to end). Open the squash and scrape out the seeds and seed goop with a large strong tablespoon. Place the squash halves on a baking sheet covered with tin foil and leave in the oven for about 30 minutes, or until you can press into the peeling side and it feels soft.  This is just the right amount of time for making the sauce.

MAKE THE SAUCE:
Plop the frozen tomatoes into a sauce/stew pot with roughly chopped garlic and the water and salt. You can start with less salt and always add more as it simmers, or on the table.  Cover and heat a few minutes, turning the tomatoes once or twice so that you can pick up each tomato and squeeze off the peelings. Then add the kale, cut into slivers. I wad the leaves up on a cutting board and cut thin slices through the wadded leaves. This is not a precise science. Stir in the kale with the herbes de Provence, a bit more salt, and let this simmer covered for at least half an hour.

JOINING SQUASH AND SAUCE:
When the sauce has simmered for at least 15-20 minutes, take the squash halves out of the oven, turn them over carefully. Let them cool a little (5 minutes at least), then hold one half in one hand with a well protected hand (using an oven mit is a good technique), while scraping out the squash flesh into a large bowl. Break up the squash flesh into its spaghetti like strands with a fork. Do both halves.

Pour the sauce over the squash in the bowl and serve. People can fish down into the bowl to pull the squash out, with the beautiful layer of sauce all over the top (and the juiciest part of the sauce filtering down into the bowl through the squash).  Serve with a choice of fresh pepper grinder, sea salt, and sesame seed gomasio as possible at-table finishing touches.

Note: You can roast these squash seeds if you like. Clean off the debris, rinse them, sprinkle them with Tamari, layer them on a baking sheet and let them crisp up, turning with a spatula at least once in about 15 minutes.

Planning Meals: Beautiful & Bountiful Dinners with Grains & Veggies

I haven't been blogging our food lately, but there have been many delicious meals made with whatever looked good at the co-op and what I had time to fix between teaching and other commitments. The beauty of the plate is one thing that I continue to enjoy immensely about our meals.  The colors and textures definitely influence my meal planning. I think of the plate, the textures, the flavors. Any of these elements can run the show when it comes to planning a meal based on what I have in the house, or what I am buying in order to have in the house.  Weather can influence me too -- is it a "comfort food" day or a cool temperature meal we need to heal the day's energies and seal in the benefits of nurturing ourselves?

So I thought I'd put up a few photos of how things come together, even though I haven't blogged the recipes for these meals. Most of them are very simple sequences of cutting, cooking and putting together... and I'll try to give enough information so that you could give it a go... or let me know that you really want directions and I'll blog 'em out.

As an experimental, temperamental, spontaneous and intuitive cook, I find it amusing that I am now trying to routinize anything about my kitchen activities and write things down, document what works, and imagine that anyone is following along.  The idea of the eat2thrive blog is truly to inspire you to go ahead and explore this marvelous feast of possibilities. If these meal ideas spark something -- light it and go with it! I'd love to know if your results thrilled you and would be happy to put them up on the blog for others if they are replicable.

A blend of vegetables, joined with a flavorful sauce or spice, and served on a plain grain can be a marvelous anchor for a meal. These medleys of flavors can be combinations. Here I combined in a water saute with bits of ginger and garlic:  carrots, onions, olives, Cremini mushrooms, and fennel on plain millet. The  sides are fresh spinach cooked with small bites of tofu and garlic, and a salad of enoki, Asian watermelon radishes, arugula and grape tomatoes treated with a splash of Mirin.









This blend is slivered lacinato (dinosaur) kale sauteed with bits of onion, and then mixed together with the white quinoa that I cooked separately in the gingery water I used to steam the carrots, sweet potatoes, and parsnips that make up the side dish finalized with roasted sunflower seeds and a tablespoon of dried currants. The salad is a simple chopped endive, radicchio, cucumber and quartered red grapes with a splash of pomegranate balsamic vinegar.  The sriracha hot sauce turned the quinoa into a wonderful complement to the sweet of the root veggies and slightly bittersweet crunch of salad.

Here is a stir-fry model (in water of course, not oil), with sugar snap peas, shiitakes and pea shoots thrown in at the end. The binder is tamari with a splash of ume plum vinegar plus water. Plain long-grain brown basmati rice was the base under it, and then the fun started with the sliced steamed zucchini cooked with fresh cilantro, a little salt and lemon! This added a flavor bite to the salty familiarity of the stir fry.

 Here the rice is the border keeper to separate the veggie medley of sauteed snow peas, carrots, broccoli, and garlic with a light peanut sauce, and the pressed, soaked, and then broiled tofu slabs ... soaked in ginger/tamari/tomatillo/sesame seed. I'm still working on how to get that crispness without oil... and this was a pretty good outcome, broiled on tin foil, and reserving a little of the sauce to continue putting a little moisture on as the tofu began crisping.

Here the rice is transformed into Asian rice noodles, soaked in boiling hot water, and then rinsed. The black eyed peas were cooked with garlic, salt, pepper and lemon, and snuggled up to steamed fresh spinach with a dash of seaweed gomasio. I wanted a distinctly different texture/shape and went for the fresh green beans, steamed plain and served with a squeeze of lemon.  Using the noodles changes the nature of the meal and makes today's dinner vastly different from the rice-based meal of yesterday or tomorrow.

Another way to totally change the rice experience is to play with special heirloom rice grains now available in so many places. This black rice is packed with nutrition, stays a beautiful deep color and has a nutty marvelous flavor. So all I did was add bits of chopped mushroom and garlic to the rice as it cooked, served it with plain steamed broccoli, a leafy salad with scallions, pea shoots and sliced strawberries treated with tarragon vinegar, and then I experimented with the side dish.  This one was a delicious surprise of black grapes, jicama, fresh tomatillo chopped up like tomatoes, bits of scallion and a splash of mirin.





Pasta! I use brown rice pasta to avoid gluten, and because it can be served either soft or al dente.  This variation was served at room temperature on the first hot day... partly because I had no time to cook dinner at dinner time, and made this in its parts before heading out to teach an evening yoga class. Steamed Brussels sprouts were rinsed in cool water and quartered, then mixed together with quartered grape tomatoes, sliced parsnip, bits of green and black olives, and two beautiful fresh scallions chopped. The glue was a red miso sauce -- a heaping tablespoon of red miso mixed with about 1 cup of hot water, a splash of balsamic vinegar and stirred well. I poured this over the whole thing, cooked noodles and all, and let it sit out until I got home later. Simple salad - radicchio, chopped romaine, last of the endive and a little pomegranate balsamic, salt and garlic.



Another quick meal using brown rice pasta and a side salad! This one was garlic sauteed chard with bits of sun dried tomatoes, stirred into the brown rice spirals, and then a quick steam of fresh asparagus spears to cut and toss on top. Beautiful and tasty! Boston lettuce with cucumber, red pepper, bits of chopped celery and tarragon vinegar with garlic to dress it up.

None of these meals were planned ahead more than the day-of. The most important aspect of all these meals was having beautiful fresh ingredients on hand, and a stock of grains/pasta to put in place to round things out.

Desserts are usually sharing a cut up apple, perhaps a perfect pear, a naval orange ... or when the mood strikes, a little container of soy yogurt with granola and fresh strawberries!

Give it a try -- play around with these ideas ... and let me know if you find something marvelous to share or want a more detailed instruction about how to make any of these.  One thing is for sure you will be eating well!

Butternut Squash, Quinoa, Kale Stew

 A friend of ours is coming home from the hospital and I started thinking about feeding that family while they are regrouping. Looking around my kitchen, I saw the butternut squash that I had bought but had not yet used. It's time had come.  But what to do with it that would offer solid protein, many micronutrients and other nutrition to help them get through the night. The weather prediction is for a snow storm and I wouldn't mind a little heat in the kitchen.  A stew could offer complexity of flavors but simplicity in its preparation. This is what happened!

Butternut Squash, Quinoa, Kale Stew

1 medium large Butternut Squash straight part cut into chunks (about 3 cups worth)
1 large onion, chopped
2 stalks celery chopped
1 cup quinoa
6-10 cloves of garlic, smashed and rough chopped
10 medium mushrooms cut in quarters
10-12 lacinato kale leaves - stripped from stems and torn
2 medium potatoes, scrubbed and rough chopped (peelings are okay)
1 large parsnip, peeled quartered and chopped thickly
1 can black beans

 1. Wash, peel, chop everything into the size pieces you like best. Strip the kale leaves off the stem, tearing it into strips or pieces - use lacinato if you can find it.
2. Start with a little water, 1-1/2 cup, in the bottom of a good casserole pot - cast iron enamelware is great for this. Begin on top of the stove with onions, garlic and celery in the water until they begin to soften.

3.  Add the quinoa  and stir it in for a minute, then add salt, pepper,  squash, potato, mushrooms, parsnips and all the other vegetables with the rest of the water, at least 2.5 cups, tucking the kale leaves down into the mix so it gets into the water. Save out the parsley and black beans to add in a few minutes before serving. If you can stay stay on the stove top, covered, simmering, then you want to stir occasionally. This cooks to nearly ready in 20 minutes. You can turn this off before minutes and let it sit for hours, adding the parsley and black beans and heating for 10 minutes before serving. You can also begin on top of the stove and put it covered in a 350 oven for the 20 minutes, checking it at least once. You will  also want to gauge when the root vegetables are softening, but not losing their shape, and then stir in the parsley and black beans for the last few minutes. Oven could take a little longer.

This keeps well and freezes well. Add any spices or herbs to the onion/celery/garlic stage that you like. Please understand that this can be made with a few red pepper flakes, or a dash of cayenne or curry and be an entirely different story!  For that matter, you can add carrots, pieces of coconut and figs, or tomatoes and green peppers to create many variations. The quinoa could be replaced with farro,  or you can make it without grain in it and serve it like a sauce over any whole grain or a whole grain pasta!
Serves 6-8 as a main dish, but can easily be extended by adding pasta, side dishes like broiled tofu, any salad, or even a light soup.

Butternut Quinoa Kale Stew

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size: 1 Serving (475g) figuring on 6 main servings

Amount Per Serving		% Daily Value*
Calories	276	14%
Total Fat	2g	3%
Saturated Fat	0g	2%
Trans Fat
Cholesterol		0%
Sodium	274mg	11%
Total Carbohydrate	55g	18%
Dietary Fiber	11g	45%
Sugars	4g	0%
Protein	12g	24%

Vitamin A	29%	•	Vitamin C	86%
Calcium	12%	•	Iron	23%

* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calories needs. courtesy of cronometer.com using data supplied by me.