One Simple Sauce – Several Tasty Meals

Some of my favorite meals are simple.  They are often not the meals that I choose to serve to guests, I guess the show off comes out in all of us sometimes…. or lots of times, however, simple is so important to a majority of what I cooked when I first started cooking…. and before I started trying to show off in a blog .  As Little Sis and I have been writing the Baby Steps series, we have discussed that there are recipes that are ideal for people just getting into cooking.  These are SO important, because biting off more than you can chew can discourage further cooking… but hopefully not further eating.  I have written about sauces in the past because they are the difference between Blah and Bingo!  And Bingo will help you and your family stick with some healthier recipes.I much prefer “Bingo!” to “Do I really have to eat all of this?”

So while preparing a delicious, but not overly simple recipe from Amanda at Good Clean Food I was so impressed with the tofu marinade that I knew it was destined for other uses besides the Gingered Greens with Tofu that she shared.  And if I lost you at the tofu, fear not…. what you choose to marinade or stir fry is between you, your doctor and the animals in your life   Although I will say that tofu gets a bad rap with folks who’ve never tried it, the truth is that it takes on the flavor of what it is cooked in, AND there are ways to change it’s texture if you don’t like it as is (see notes at the bottom).

So do check out the recipe above…. and do check out this marinade because it is very simple and I’m going to add just afew ingredients to it the second (or third time around to make a VERY easy stir-fry.

The marinade is (from Amanda as mentioned above and based on a Moosewood recipe):
Tofu Marinade:
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup dry sherry or mirin (I used sherry)
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
2 Tbs brown sugar or agave nectar (I used brown sugar)

Mix the ingredients and bring to a boil.  You might make extra because it is very useful!
You can use it to marinate and then cook meat or tofu and you can used it as a simple stir-fry sauce with or without one or more of the following ingredients:
almond butter or peanut butter
grated ginger
minced or pressed garlic
oil for cooking

Here’s what I did.
 I made Amanda’s recipe.  To the left are little baked tofu squares.

Sauteed the greens according to directions and we had a fabulous meal one night.  One so good that I am serving it to my family on vacation on one of my nights to cook.

Several nights later I put a little sesame oil, 1 clove of minced garlic and about 2 tsp of grated ginger in a pan, sauteed the veggies I had on hand, added some of the marinade sauce – add 1/4 cup and then taste, (people can always add more as a condiment), cooked rice noodles and voila meal number 2.

 Sorry, lousy photo, but you get the idea and can see that I had sugar snap peas, peppers and onions on hand that night.

Lastly, I wondered if the sauce could stand on it’s own for a stir fry.  Of course I couldn’t quite leave well enough alone, so I added about 2 Tbsp. of almond butter to the next batch of stir fry veggies and the sauce.  I started with a little safflower oil, sauteed, added almond butter and again about 1/4 cup of sauce… give or take – it depends on how many veggies you are using.

Unfortunately, our camera broke and I don’t have a picture of this last variant in the bowl, just in the pan, but the combo of peppers (I do love my peppers), cabbage, broccoli and carrots worked with the sauce.  It was very tasty and some of us added a little more sauce to our bowl, and some did not.  Preparing this took only a little longer than it took to chop the vegetables.  I didn’t even use rice…. just lots of cabbage, a versatile but easy sauce…and we had a rootin’ tootin’ good time around here!

Now for the tofu challenged.  I buy extra firm tofu, freeze it, thaw it the day of and squeeze out the excess water.  This can be done over the sink by hand or by placing the tofu in a colander, over a plate (for the drainage) and placing a small plate and a heavy can on top of the tofu and letting it sit.  Freezing and squeezing gives the tofu a heartier texture and makes it a little more porous so it can absorb sauce.

And if you’ve never used fresh ginger – it also can be frozen and then easily grated.  I have a microplane that I love – but any small grater will do.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin French Toast

Okay, so it’s springtime and I’m still talking about pumpkin.  So sue me.  Well, please don’t… instead admit that you too love pumpkin, and perhaps even have a few cans in the pantry from when they were on sale, or when you didn’t get to that pie you were going to make.  Or like me, you bought a whole case of pumpkin from Amazon because you could get organic there for just a bit more than for non-organic in the store and then you had a whole case of pumpkin to use up!  Happily use up, I might add.

Rarely does a recipe call for the actual 2 cups of pumpkin available in these little cans, so what does one do with the little bits / 1/2 cup, 1/4 cup, 3/4 cup of pureed pumpkin left over.  Makes a nice science experiment if left in the back of the refrigerator too long, but I try very hard to not lose precious pumpkin i this way.

Call it synchronicity, call it confluence of errors, call it poor planning, …but there I was having promised french toast to my son last weekend and I didn’t have enough eggs.  I usually make a large batch of french toast to freeze for easy school and work morning meals using 10 or 12 eggs, almond milk, vanilla and cinnamon.  I had 7 eggs and I hate to not produce my full compliment of leftovers for later use.  Truly, making enough for leftovers is the key for me being able to providing healthy meals.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, even if my story is a combination of cartoons and obscure haiku!

So I combined (beat the heck out of) my:
7 small eggs, plus
1/2 cup pureed pumpkin
1/2 cup of flaxseed eggs.  (see below)
1 – 2 tsp. vanilla
oil to rub on skillet or griddle
cinnamon for sprinkling.  (I sprinkle cinnamon on each piece after laying down to cook because I hate the way the cinnamon clumps in the mixture with egg.  Okay, so now you know my story is a combination of rather orderly and anal cartoons and obscure haiku.)

If you’ve never made a flaxseed egg, it is:
1 Tbsp. of ground flaxseed
mixed with 3 Tbsp. water.
The mixture is stirred and then allowed to sit for about 5 minutes to gel up.
And it does thicken and become gelatinous…. in a nice way  So my 1/2 cup of flaxseed in the Pumpkin French toast is about 2 eggs which = 2 Tbsp. flaxseed (which can be purchased ground or whole which you grind in our blender or grinder) plus 6 Tbsp water.

“Flaxseeds are rich in alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), an essential fatty acid that appears to be beneficial for heart disease, inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis and a variety of other health conditions. They also contains a group of chemicals called lignans that may play a role in the prevention of cancer.”  This info courtesy of Care2.com

I was pleasantly surprised by the ease with which these cooked and flipped.  I recommend stirring before each new piece of bread is dunked because the heavier stuff did start to settle out at the bottom.  And if you use cast iron – Little Sis has great ideas for perfect pancake and French toast making here.

So you’ve now added a little bit of vegetable to your breakfast plate, and a twist on French toast.  If you’d like to include more veggies in your breakfast we have some Veggie-ful ideas for you here.   We also have ideas for alternatives to syrup – Apple drizzle and Date cream.

Now you wouldn’t necessarily want to scramble a bunch of flaxseed eggs, but they made a healthy expander to my low egg count.   This also got me thinking about ways to incorporate fruits and vegetables into the french toast concept and also ways for vegans to enjoy French toast.  Our friend Somer has a vegan french toast that Little Sis says is awesome.  Hmmm I’m thinking about experimenting with some ground walnuts with pumpkin and the garbanzo bean flour mentioned in Somer’s version with milk…. Anybody out there have some interesting french toast recipes to share?

PS – I apologize for only one mediocre pic – our camera broke and this was the best I could get out of my phone.  Better pics next time.

This post was shared on Wildcrafting Wednesday.

A Cookie By Any Other Name

A cookie is a cookie is a cookie, right?

I’ve known that is not true since I was very young.  Not to brag, but my mother baked when I was a kid.  Her cookies were better than any store bought cookie…. but not as good as bakery cookies (sorry Mom).  I preferred a good cookie.  Who wouldn’t?

Once she started working she didn’t bake as much but still being budget conscious, she bought the cheapest cookies available.  I thought they were really lame…. until my best friend would come over and be delighted to break into the cellophane wrapped goodies.  She didn’t get cookies at all, so she thought even the cheap-o, 3 dozen for $1, lame ones from the store were okay.  It’s what you get used to, isn’t it?

I also like to bake and I have always been a cookie person as opposed to a cake person.  Many of our friends can tell you that they looked forward to dessert at our house because they knew it would be really good.  Every person’s good.  Plain old good.  Good old good – sweet – good.  What you get used to good.

Savory Refrigerator Pancakes

What the heck is that you say?  A savory pancake is one make with whole grains (GF version a little later in the post) without vanilla, cinnamon or sugar in the actual pancake which you then top with sauteed or fresh vegetables and sauces or cheeses or even pumpkin sauce that was in the freezer  Admittedly, the pumpkin sauce was in the freezer because it was meant to be an alternative masc & cheese sauce, but nobody liked it that way.  I kept thinking there would be some other use for it.  But you don’t have to use pumpkin sauce!  You can use frozen macaroni and cheese sauce, or salsa, or a little bit of this and a little bit of that.  Really any leftovers that would be good with bread would be good on a pancake…. and sauce makes everything nice.

Baby Step 10: What’ll You Have?

My Southern grandmother’s way of asking if we wanted more was not, “Would you like some more?”  It was “What’ll you have?”

In other words, “Which of these delicious things will you have more of now?”  And it was hard, both physically and socially, to not promptly pick your personal favorite of her offerings.  For me it was her hot milk cake, her watermelon rind pickles, her homemade biscuits with homemade plum jelly or her sugar cookies.  Notice the sweet theme…. oh yes, I was a sugar hound!!  It was not only delicious but complimentary to have more.

Our culture has become very much about more.  If you have’t seen Super Size Me, I highly recommend it for an eye opener on serving sizes (and other outrageously egregious practices) in fast food restaurants.  The film has some rough language and frank talk about sex, so may not be appropriate for younger kids.

In the less is more and more is really more dichotomy of our culture that loves:
both skinny bodies and large breasts;
both many choices and extra large servings;
both designer names and cheap food;
both the most expensive health care system in the world and the 37th most effective health care system…
we are in a watermelon rind pickle indeed.

Walnut Crust Apple Pie – GF, DF

Although my whole wheat crusts were never beautiful to look at, they were tasty and I always loved the heartier texture of a whole wheat crust.  My husband requests an apple pie in lieu of cake for his birthday every year, and I was always happy to oblige.

Now that he has been told by his doctor to do away with gluten for awhile to address some health problems (although he is not celiac), what I am supposed to make for the poor man on his birthday?  I know – it’s all about me isn’t it?  ;-)

I have tried a number of gluten free crusts, but as with most gluten free baking, (IMHO), the inclusion of white flours and starches such as potato starch and tapioca flour run afoul of my desire to use whole grains whenever possible, and since they don’t taste very good anyway, I’ve not stuck been very persistent in my search for a solution.

Enter the walnut crust.  Yes, the humble, nutritious, crumbly, bumbly walnut.  I had a friend who used to call me walnut – so I’m allowed to humbly call them crumbly and bumbly.

Waldorf Saute – Walnuts are Wonderful!

Walnuts are indeed wonderful.  As are apples.  And celery.  Well, of course lots of other foods as well, but this combo has been on my mind and was evidently on the mind of the clever person who put them all together in Waldorf salad.  Why stop there?  Why stop with Waldorf salad?  Why stop at all except for sheer exhaustion?  That’s my usual M.O. anyhow until Little Sis says, “But what are you going to do to relax?”  She gets a certain tone when she says this – sheesh!  As if she’s one to talk  Sometimes I call her to let her know I am just sitting or reading or doing something calm and still.  Hmmm. Haven’t done that in awhile….

At any rate – I got a bee in my bonnet about that Waldorf combo and thought it should be explored in other avenues.  I was thinking about Waldorf chili, but I wasn’t in the mood and was unsure about walnuts and tomato (please correct me if I’m wrong!), so I just decided to saute the Waldorf combo with some other lovely vegetables and my favorite spice cumin and it was a hit.

So I give you,

Asparagus, Bacon, & Avocado Lettuce Wrap

Bacon?  Did you say bacon Bigg Sis?  I know.  I don’t believe the word bacon has ever appeared in one of our posts before, but here it is, in all it’s dishonor or glory…. it all depends.

Now you probably know that we at Sis Sisters Central do not eat a lot of animal products.  In fact Little Sis eats much less of it than we do at my house.  I eat eggs and eat meat about once a week or every other week.  The boys often sneak in an extra meat night when I am working late.  One of the reasons I only eat meat once a week or so is because when I do eat meat I try to make it what I call ‘clean meat.’  Clean meat (and eggs) is from animals who are treated well; allowed to move around naturally; not confined so that they are wading around in manure and contracting diseases which must be prevented with drugs that end up in their muscle tissue (which is what we eat!); and who eat a natural diet.  There is lots of good information about these distinctions in Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  You may be able to find local ‘clean’ meat at a farmers market or even by visiting a local farm where you can actually see clean, healthy animals in action!

Playing with Peeps

Play with your food?

Well…. when it is not food, (even if the folks who make it would like you to believe that it is food)… better to play with it than eat it!

I mentioned plans for playing with Peeps – making a Peeps diorama – in the Pumpkin pudding post.  Thought you might enjoy the results of the “better thing to do with Peeps than eat them experiment.

Our Peeps adventure…..

Pablo Peep-casso!

Rockin’ Peeps!

Creamy non-dairy mashed potatoes

Okay, so maybe you like dairy in your mashed potatoes just fine, thank you.  Carni-Mom makes mashed potatoes with butter, cream cheese and sour cream.  And they taste good.  But dairy is rough on a lot of people’s waistlines, heart health and digestion, …. The good news is that if you are trying to cut back on dairy, or have someone who is lactose intolerant, or are just trying to eat less animal stuff and more plant stuff, you do not have to sacrifice delicious mashed potatoes.  Honest.  I swear up and down and sideways too.