ginger breakthrough

I think I discovered something brilliant. possibly.

a while back my ginger fell off of the top of the fridge into my freezer. I discovered it about a month ago. at the time, I couldn't think of a reason why I should or should not take the ginger out, most likely because I was contemplating something else, like where I put my jeans. (in the underwear drawer, btw.)

well, tonight I needed the ginger to make spicy sweet potato and coconut soup. the recipe required 2 inches of ginger peeled and thinly sliced. I personally hate doing minced or finely cut ginger because ginger, my friends, is a hairy beast. it is fibrous in such a way that makes it very difficult to slice it with any sort of elegance.

not so with frozen ginger! I was able to cut the knob into slivers of slices. so easy! so simple! I think that, from now on, I will put some ginger into the freezer maybe a day before I plan on using it. it will make my life a much better place.

my only concern is that there is some detrimental effect upon the ginger from the freezing. does anyone know of one? or some other reason why this is a really stupid idea?

sarah elisabeth's oatmeal

I often eat oatmeal for breakfast. I use regular oats - not quick - and it's still fast enough for me to do before work unless I'm in an uber-rush. I've been meaning to share oatmeal with the blog for awhile, but I kept forgetting, but since I'm on a roll here, I present to you my morning oatmeal for one.

Take a half a cup of oats and 1 cup of water and pour into a small saucepan (I usually use a different pot, but it was in the dishwasher. I also usually buy my oats in bulk at whole foods, but I was out and bought a box of quaker oats and stop and shop the other day, so that's what's in the pictures. I think it's a little gooier, but it's fine.)

The rule for oatmeal is like rice - for every unit of oatmeal add twice as much water. (1 cup of oatmeal, 2 cups of water, 12 cups of oatmeal 24 cups of water, 3/4 cup of oatmeal 1.5 cups of water) Usually I just add the oatmeal first, and then whatever container I used to scoop the oatmeal, I use to measure out the water.

Turn the heat on high - but watch closely so that you can turn it down as soon as it bubbles. while you're waiting and watching, add a handful of sliced almonds, a handful of raisins, and 8 shakes of cinnamon. Stir it (I usually use a wooden spoon, but the regular spoon you're going to eat it with is OK too.)


When it bubbles, turn the heat down as low as it goes. Stir often, almost constantly. I get out the bowl, spoon and sweetener at this time, stirring between each getting.

After about 5 minutes the oatmeal should not be liquid-y anymore, and it should start to almost stand up in the pot if you build towers of it with the spoon. Some of it will inevitable stick to the bottom - don't stress about this. If it starts to burn then you either have the heat up too high, there's not enough water, you didn't stir enough, or it's just done and you should eat it!

Spoon/pour the oatmeal into a bowl. -- a word on sweeteners here. In general I rotate between three different sweeteners - applesauce, brown sugar, and maple syrup. If you are using brown sugar or apple sauce, I recommend putting them in the bowl first and then spooning the oatmeal on top of them. I was using maple syrup this time though, so I poured it on top.

Now stir and eat. it's good for you.


In terms of modifications - they are infinite. You can add pretty much anything to oatmeal - fruit and dairy products particularly lend themselves, but I've seen success with other things! My grandmother likes blueberries and milk, some folks are fans of bananas, when I was hiking we used to add GORP to the cream of wheat - and sometimes to the oatmeal too. M&Ms or chocolate chips, peanuts, dried cherries, butter, cubed apples, soy milk, whatever you like, really.

butternut squash & sweet potato soup (vegan)

I have had a bowl full of butternut squashes on the counter for awhile now - ever since mi- december when the last farm share drop-off happened. They were starting to get moldy and rotten in some places, and I decided it was time to take action.

I took them all out of the bowl, tossed the rotten ones, and cut off the bad piece of the only partly gone ones. Then I seeded them and peeled what was left with our new peeler (hallelujah!!) and cubed it up. I ended up with probably about 3-4 cups of cubed butternut squash. I also have a lot of sweet potatoes left - although those are doing much better. I got out 4 of those, peeled them, and cubed them up too. Then I diced an onion (actually half an onion and two big farm share shallots) and about 4 cloves of farm-share garlic. I tossed all of that (squash, potatoes, onions, garlic) into a big soup pot.

Then I got out a box of Imagine No-Chicken broth and dumped that in there.

It didn't quite cover, so I filled the Imagine box with water, shook it up and poured in water until it covered everything in the pot. I turned on the burner, gave it a quick stir, and covered it.
Thinking better of it, I uncovered the pot about 5 minutes in and let it simmer on medium heat for about 40 minutes - stirring every once in awhile, but mostly watching TV.

When the veggies were nice and soft (poking with a fork yielded no resistance) I took out my hand blender and blended the soup nice and smooth. I added a little salt and some pepper during this process as well.

Overall, the soup came out pretty well. It tasted a little too "chicken-y" for my taste. I think next time I might add more water and less broth, maybe put some celery in with the veggies, and stir in some soy yogurt at the end to give it some creamy depth. I also wonder if I'd sauteed the onions and garlic in some oil first, if that would have made a difference.

On the plus side, this soup had a much more liquid feel to it than a lot of the blended soups I've made. I think it's because it has no beans - but it's a nice change! I'll post pictures of the finished product next time I heat some up!

superbowl dip

We had a superbowl party, and in its honor I made a big casserole dish full of many-layer dip. This is pretty infinitely modifiable.

Preheat the oven to about 350 degrees F.

in a casserole dish of some kind:

spread one can of vegetarian refried beans across the bottom

spread a jar of salsa over the beans

tear two corn tortillas into pieces and spread evenly over the salsa

spread a large container of premade guacamole over the salsa

sprinkle a bag of shredded cheese (sharp cheddar is good) over the guac

spread a can of black beans over the cheese

tear two more corn torillas and spread them over the beans

spread a container of sour cream over the tortillas

chop one large tomato and spread over the sour cream

spread another layer of refried beans over the tomatoes

sprinkle another bag of shredded cheese over the top

put it in the oven for about 45 minutes.

take it out and let it stand for about 5-10 minutes so that it solidifies either dip chips right into the dip or use a spatula/cake server to but hunks of dip on plates for mobile chip dipping


This recipe is infinitely modifiable. I think this version could use more cheese maybe more salsa, maybe less sour cream. more black beans and a layer of mango salsa would change it up completely.

Another option is to add the guacamole and sour cream after it has cooked or put them in separate containers. I like them in it though.

creamy purple potato soup

So.... I had a lot of potatoes. and I decided I would make potato soup. I have no idea how to make potato soup, but, as I said to Susan - if I don't like it and it tastes like watery mashed potatoes - I'll just eat something from a can.

It came out ok though!

I covered the bottom of a soup pot generously with olive oil. I put the heat on low and diced an onion and put that in there with it.

Then I washed about six potatoes (I still don't have a peeler) and realized that they were purple potatoes! I cut each potato into cubes and threw them in with the onions and the oil. I stieed that and let it sort of fry for a minute or two.

Then I added one chicken bullion cube and 6 cups of water, and I covered it and let it go on a medium bowl for about 1/2 hour or 45 minutes. Then I added a stick of butter and blended it with the immersion blender. It was all purple-y and little pieces of potato skin and kinda pretty. It tasted a little salty though, so I added half of one of those small cartons of heavy cream that Susan brought back for me from trader joe's.

Then I stirred... and voila! creamy creamy good! (probably 1/2 a stick of butter would have been plenty - but who's counting?)

minimal minestrone. as in, where's the broth?

I decided that I wanted to make minestrone soup. I was having an unknown number of people over to play games, and I have never made minestrone soup. So I found a recipe, and then didn't follow it. yay! The recipe, like most of them, came from allrecipes. The original is at: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Corrigans-Minestrone/Detail.aspx
It involved a lot of chopping. Luckily, I had help. and lots of potatoes and carrots. yay farmshare!

I chopped 4 big carrots and sarah emily chopped 4 big potatoes. We also chopped a yellow onion and a lot of garlic, I don't remember how much. We put that all in a big pot with some oil oil and started sauteeing.

Then I added a can of tomato paste, a can of red beans (kidney?) and white beans (canellini maybe?) and a can of corn from gina marie's cubpoard. then I stirred. then I added a can of vegetable broth and a 1.5 quarts of water. and then some more water. (another two cups?). This soup ended up suffering from a lack of broth, so I think it would have been appropriate to add even more water at this point. maybe in total 2 cans of broth and 2 quarts of water.




I am trying to remember what spices I added, but since this was 10 days ago, it's hard. I remember that I had fresh oregano, I think, and gina marie chopped that, I think, and we added a lot of that. also salt and lots of pepper, and I bet I put some dried basil in too, because that's yummy. I think probably whatever you like works well. at that point I think it looked like the picture to the left.

I let it simmer for about 45 minutes at this point - I wanted to make sure the potatoes were nice and tender. I added some more water too.

Finally, I added a package of whole wheat elbows and cooked it for another 15 minutes or so. Then Mark stirred.

Then people ate lots of it with crusty bread that Lyssa and Max brought, which was excellent. And then there was very little broth left, and it looked like the picture to the left. Luckily though, people brought more food to the potluck, so the joy did not have to end!

Kristin brought yummy salad with special candied nuts and amazing brusselsprouts, as demonstrated below.


The salad is a little blurry, but it had amazing nuts and was pretty colors and very tasty. and she did not bring it on a pink plate. I just only have pepto pink plates because that's what I got from my grandma when she moved to Cali. the brusselsprouts were seriously to die for. so good. am I spelling brusselsprouts rung? blogger is upet with my spelling.

There was also a serious desert option, which was insane because we were all so full and had played celebrity, mafia, and I think something else too, before we even got to desert. also there was cider and whiskey. obvi. I bought Jim Beam for the occasion even though I'm not supposed to be spending money.

Christopher, in a moment of devious awesomeness, made a blackberry thingy (crisp? buckle? compote with topping?) in the casserole that I made blueberry buckle in to take to his potluck and then left the dish at his house. so we took matching pictures. except we didn't have vegan condoms this time. c'est la vie. it was yummy. but not vegan because he used strawberries and cream instant oatmeal packets for the topping. which I think is hilarious.



There was also leftover pumpkin chocolate chip squares, but you'll have to get that recipe in another post!