Walk Widely. Eat Wisely. Live Gratefully.
It’s the time of year when you really feel the urge to de-clutter…lots of household “sprucing up” projects. And then one day you look in the freezer.
So many things have accumulated over the winter. One of them, a bag of roasted beets, another, the remains of a package of phyllo. A few mushrooms, a bit of goat cheese, and voilà! Beet Wellingtons.
In preparation of the coming onslaught of hot cross buns and bunny cake, we’ve been sticking to the straight and narrow, diet-wise. Fortunately this isn’t much of a sacrifice when we have great recipes like Kozlik’s delicious mustard chickpeas.
We made a few substitutions but it’s easy to do that with their versatile recipe. A little avocado in orange juice is a nice sidebar.
. Don’t you love a meal that looks fussy, but isn’t? Tonight we made Beet Wellingtons (check our recipe page!) and a tasty salad with hothouse greens, tomatoes and mushrooms.
For the dressing, we used some of the red pepper and rosemary pesto we made in the summer, thinned with some wine vinegar.
Tasty, fast and packed with colours. Mmm.
Hurry! It’s nearing the end of the year…too much to be done and not enough time to do it in. This is the perfect dinner for that sort of day.
We cooked some whole wheat pasta. Meanwhile, we sautéed a couple of cups of mushrooms, part of a bell pepper, a stalk of celery, and half an onion. Then we tipped in a cup or so of marinara (ours was made and frozen in the summer, but store-bought works, too)!
Let the sauce simmer while the pasta cooks. Then add the drained pasta to the sauce, toss, and let stand for a few minutes for the flavours to absorb.
Serve with some grated Parmesan cheese, and then hurry along to wherever you need to be.
Winter is returning. The urban farm is looking pretty barren, with the exception of the bird feeder and the occasional cardinal. The silver lining? Damp, chilly days are a great time to warm up the house with a batch of beans.
In this case, they’re black turtle beans from our friends at Better Bulk. We’ve got a host of meals planned to use them over the coming weeks, including Black Bean Enchiladas, so we cooked them with some onions and hot peppers. They’ll warm us up, for sure!
We love being lucky enough to walk out in our neighbourhood to buy food. Sometimes it’s from small shops where we know the proprietors and they know the source of the food they’re selling. Other times, we’re lucky enough to get it direct from the farmers. Even luckier, is that we’re never truly hungry.
Today groups around the world are celebrating World Food Day. We’ll be giving thanks for the food we have, and doing our part to support our local food bank. We hope you will, too.
Well, although we had a warm, sunny Thanksgiving, it will turn chilly soon enough. So we’ve been busy gathering what we can from the garden, preserving, freezing, drying and cooking the fruits of our labours so we can enjoy them all winter long.
With a bumper crop of basil, we decided to make some pesto. Here’s what you do:
In the food processor, chop some garlic (1-3 cloves, as you prefer it). Then add a couple of good handfuls of basil leaves, about 1/3 cup of walnuts, and a couple of ounces of parmesan cheese, freshly ground. Traditionalists use pine nuts, but walnuts are always easier to find, especially in the fall. Besides, they appeal to our frugal natures. Pulse it until it’s coarsely chopped, then, with the food processor running, pour extra virgin olive oil in the spout until it reaches a thick, saucy consistency. Store in mason jars, topped with a layer of olive oil, in the fridge for a week or two (add more oil each time you take out some pesto), or in the freezer if you want to keep it longer. Simply thaw it in the fridge the day before you want to use it.
We love the many uses of pesto – as a base for pizza, tossed with some pasta, rubbed on a chicken, or mixed into a homemade vinaigrette. We could go on and on…but instead, we’ll stop for now (and maybe make some more pesto).
No matter what they’re called, they make fantastic hummus. We cooked these chickpeas ourselves and stored them in the freezer until they were needed. They have a fresh taste that you just can’t quite get in the canned ones, and they’re much lower in sodium.
To make the hummus, in a food processor, mince a clove of garlic with the zest of half a lemon. To this, add about a cup of chickpeas, drained (but reserve the liquid), the juice of the lemon half (or, in a pinch, a couple of tablespoons of juice from a bottle and some lemon pepper instead of the zest), a heaping teaspoon (10ml) of tahini, and a half a teaspoon (2ml) of cumin. Buzz it together well then add the liquid, a little at a time, processing just until you get the consistency you want. This hummus has a bright flavour that goes perfectly with all of these awesome vegetables we found at the East York Civic Centre Farmer’s Market.
Remember back in the spring, when we were baking and freezing batches and batches of beans? This was one of them – white beans with rosemary. Fast-forward to a blisteringly hot day, and those frozen beans came in handy. We put them on the counter to thaw in the morning, and stuck them back in the fridge when they were slightly icy, around lunchtime.
About half an hour before dinner, we mixed up a couple of tablespoons of white wine vinegar, a tablespoon of creamy Dijon, and some olive oil. We blanched some green beans, peas, and asparagus, then chilled them quickly in an ice-water bath.
We chopped in a litte oregano from the garden, and a green onion. Then we diced a couple of farmer’s market tomatoes. We grated in some cheddar from Montforte. Then we tossed it all together in a big bowl with some salt-cured olives from Plank Road Market.
Pair it with a light, bright, summer wine, and the heat will suddenly seem more bearable.
If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember Green Goddess dressing. But the old-school version was very creamy and very caloric. It also was often made like mayonnaise, with a raw egg, which doesn’t hold up to everyone’s food safety standards these days.
This version’s a simple homage to the original: whisk together a white-wine style Dijon (about a tablespoon), and a similar amount of olive oil, and lime juice. Give it just a pinch of salt and some finely chopped herbs (we had some tarragon, greek oregano, and garlic chives). Gently stir in about a tablespoon of plain yogurt and 1/2 a cup of finely diced cucumber. Pour over whatever veg you’re serving, and others will be green with envy