Artisan Bread + Vegetable Chowder

It was rainy and cold. Emmett was sick. I had bread dough in the fridge and a bunch of veggies to eat. Soup!

I adapted the Moosewood Vegetable Chowder recipe to use veggies & amounts I had on hand (potatos, carrots, onion, broccoli, humongous pattypan squash, i also increased the basil and added thyme)
Here's the original recipe...

Vegetable Chowder

* 1 tablespoon butter
* 2 cups chopped onion
* 6 (yes) cloves garlic, minced
* 2 teaspoons salt
* 1/2 teaspoon basil
* 1 medium potato, diced
* 2 medium stalks celery, diced
* 2 medium carrots, diced
* 2 cups chopped broccoli
* 2 cups chopped cauliflower
* 1/2 lb mushrooms, chopped
* 2 cups corn (frozen is fine)
* lots of fresh black pepper
* 1 1/2 cups water
* 1 quart milk, heated

Melt the butter in a kettle or Dutch oven. Add onion, half the garlic, salt, thyme, and basil. Saute' over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add potato, celery, carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower. Saute' another 5 minutes. Add mushrooms and corn, plus lots of black pepper. Saute' another 8-10 minutes.

Add water, cover, and simmer about 15 minutes, or until everything is tender.

Stir in hot milk and remaining garlic. Remove from heat until about 10 minutes before serving time, then heat gently.


And here's my pretty bread:

Potato, Tomato Burritos

Needed dinner in a hurry the other night so no pictures of this. But it was good.

Thinly sliced potatoes with mandolin
Chopped onion
Chopped Sweet peppers (not bell)
Vegetable broth or water
Diced tomatoes
Grated Cheddar Cheese
Cumin
Chili powder
Cayenne pepper
Corn tortillas

Sauteed onion over high heat letting it brown, added peppers and potatos. Added veggie broth, and spices (at least 1 T cumin, 1/2 T chili powder, and a pinch of cayenne + garlic salt & pepper). Cover to steam potatos. Stir occasionally and add more veggie broth if needed.

Meanwhile chopped tomatoes and added salt & pepper. Set aside.

Placed one corn tortilla in a skillet, covered it with the potato mixture, grated cheese & tomatoes and placed another tortilla on top. Heated for about 2 minutes and then flipped to heat other side. Sliced in quarters to serve.

Tomatoes

I've had a great crop of tomatoes this year. I got my plants at the Ballard Farmer's Market and planted them at the beginning of June. There are three different heirloom varieties. One has large pink tomatoes, one with clusters of small orange tomatoes, and one with clusters of small red tomatoes. Mid-late September I had a lot of well-developed fruit but had only one ripe tomato. So I did some reading and decided to start stressing out my plants. On one of them I tried cutting around 3 sides of the root and the other ones I plucked off a bunch of leaves and new growth. The leaf removal seems to work best to me. I've been removing more and more as time has gone on and the tomatoes are ripening at a pretty steady rate. And they taste delicious!

Orzo with Green Beans, Tomatoes & Feta

I was so excited on Wednesday to get some green & yellow wax beans in our veggie box. It had been feeling so fall-like so it was nice to get a bit of summer produce back.

I had a bunch of tomatoes (from my garden!) & feta cheese too so I adapted a recipe and came up with this yummy dish. Which made a gigantic bowl (this is actually a picture of round two after we'd eaten the first round for dinner!).



Orzo with Green Beans, Tomatoes & Feta
3 cups of orzo pasta
1 lb of green/wax beans
dozen small tomatoes
8 oz of crumbled feta
2-3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 small onion

Cut the beans in 1 inch pieces and blanch for ~3-5 minutes. Remove from boiling water and put in ice water bath. Cook orzo in green bean water. While orzo is cooking, cut tomatoes in small wedges. Saute chopped onions. Add cooked orzo & green beans to cooked onions, add balsamic vinegar, garlic salt & pepper to taste. Remove from heat and add tomatoes and feta cheese.

Canning Apples & Peaches

Finally downloaded some pictures from our camera and realized there's a bunch of stuff I never wrote about!

Eva, Emily & I had another canning day a few weeks ago. Emily wrote a little about it on her blog here. We ended up with about 80 jars of applesauce, apple slices, peach slices, baked peach butter, and my personal favorite: apple pie jam. All of the fruit came from Emily's apple tree and her neighbor's peach trees.






Linda Lou's Apple Pie Jam
4 cups tart apples, peeled and finely chopped
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
4 cups sugar
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 box pectin
1/2 teaspoon butter

Add water to chopped apples to measure 4 cups. Place apples and water into large, heavy saucepan. Stir in lemon juice, cinnamon and allspice.

Measure sugars. Stir pectin into fruit. Add butter. Bring mixture to full rolling boil on high heat, stirring constantly. Quickly stir in both sugars. Return to full rolling boil and boil exactly 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Skim off any foam with metal spoon.

Ladle quickly into hot, clean jars, leaving 1/4" headspace. Wipe jar rims and threads. Cover with two-piece lids. Screw bands on finger tight. Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Focaccia w/ Tomato, Feta & Caramelized Onions

I finally got around to trying "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" yesterday. As everyone else has said, holy cow, easy! I just did the basic recipe and then tore a hunk out to make focaccia. Added sliced tomatoes, caramelized onions, feta, kosher salt, pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil. Yum! I think next time I'd try the olive oil dough recipe instead because this turned out a little breadier than I like my focaccia. But...it was all gone in one sitting!

i heart vegas food

i'm pretty sure i just had the best meal of my life. it cost over $100 so i guess it better be. i'm in las vegas at the mgm grand. i wanted asian food for dinner tonight and started out walking toward a casual dining place that would have it. but along the way, i walked by shibuya which serves japanese food. i'd walked (and worked) enough for the day so i decided to treat myself (on work's dime) to something nice. they had a vegetarian tappenyaki dinner that sounded good so i went in. since i was eating alone and early in the evening i was seated all by myself at the big japanese grill. there were other people at the sushi bar and at tables but i was the only one up for tappenyaki apparently. i tried to order a cocktail that had a japanese version of vodka in it but my server steered me toward the americanized cocktails saying that the other stuff is generally too strong for people (like me) to like. i ended up just ordering a glass of plum wine (okay two) in the end. mmm plum wine. then out came a heavenly seaweed salad. then out came a mixed green salad dressed in an apple yuzu vinaigrette. it was so so good i had to ask again what the vinaigrette was made of. then miso soup with enoki & shitake mushrooms. during the miso, my chef came out; i'd been visited by about three different servers prior to that and they'd all been super attentive calling me by name each time. my chef was awesome and funny and young enough that we could actually talk about life and relate to each other. the vegetable platter he prepared was so great. typically at every other japanese grilling restaurant i've ever been to, dinner for a vegetarian is lots of zucchini, onions and bean sprouts and maybe some tofu. in vegas, they take it to a whole new level.
1. kabocha squash, 2. japanese eggplant, 3. two kinds of mushrooms (hiratake and maitake, i think) 4. red onion & green onions, 5. carrots, 6. baby zucchini, 7. baby green pattypan squash, 8. shishito peppers (supposed to be mild but the one i ate burnt my mouth so bad i had tears running down my face. one of my trio of waiters said that was considered "lucky" since they are usually sweet. needless to say i never ate any more.), and 9. tofu. they were grilled in butter, garlic butter, salt & pepper and some had soy sauce/tamari added. they were arranged beautifully (and whole) on a platter and sprinkled with deep fried garlic for a nice crunch. it was all served with a trio of dipping sauces but i didn't even touch them since the veggies were cooked so wonderfully. my chef said the amount of veggies they were providing was enough for two, and i'm hurting from packing away as much as i did. he also made me veggie fried rice but i couldn't touch it cause of my burning mouth and stuffed stomach. luckily i've got a fridge in my room so i was able to bring my leftovers with me! (i can't wait till tomorrow.) as if all that wasn't enough, i was also brought a trio of desserts. first was a little shot glass of a strawberry & something (yogurt?) parfait, tofu cheesecake (i so wish i had saved room for this it was so delicious!), and a chocolate covered mochi ice cream (i couldn't even try this. sooo stuffed). the two glasses of wine, burning tongue, and heaps of food about had me under the table in a food coma. but i managed to walk out of there, check my cellphone, meet up with a guy at my tradeshow booth, and make it back to my room. feeling better now. still sooo happy about that dinner. mmmm. wish i had my tofu cheesecake.

one other vegas note...i've been here three times now. it's my second time at the mgm grand. the other time i've been, i stayed at the venetian. just as last time, i think the the food at the mgm rocks. the venetian was a disappointment food-wise. though my room there was great. but here at the mgm, i'm staying in the signature towers and i've got a mini-kitchenette which is awesome.