Notice a pattern?

Here's a shot of a recent meal: brown rice and lentils, topped with fried onions with garam masala and plain yogurt, served with a side of shredded root veg salad on romaine.



And here's another recent dinner: grilled cheese sandwiches, sliced cucumbers, and shredded root veg salad on a bed of romaine.


And you've seen this one before: a recent fish dinner served with - what else? - shredded root veg salad and romaine.


Yep, it's fair to say I've fallen in to a rut. The root veg salad is great, especially with goat cheese and pecans, but I've come to rely on it a little too much. And it's not just the salad: I've been in a cooking slump, which partially accounts for my light posting lately. Even Dan, who normally loves my cooking, has gently noted that my meals have been a bit boring lately. The good news is, I think I've finally - finally! - started to climb out of it. I'll write more next week about a couple of the things I've been doing to shake the dust off my shoulders and get moving in the kitchen.

Stashbusting

When I said the word "stashbusting," my husband yelled, "WHAT?!" and quickly covered his face. You see, he heard "'stache busting" and assumed I was going after his beloved handlebar mustache. I have no such intentions; I actually love his 'stache, as it perfectly expresses his quirkitude. No, the stash I intend to bust is my fabric stash. This weekend I pulled it all out of storage so I could take inventory and actually, you know, use it. Well, it turns out I have amassed over 100 yards (!) of fabric, most of it in lengths of two yards or less.

Some of my 34 different quilting fabrics.

I'm not going to turn Choice of Pies into a sewing blog, but I did want to let you know of my plans. I created a monthly calendar with two or three sewing projects listed next to each month; if I can keep up with this schedule, a good portion of my stash should be obliterated by August. Pictures of all the fabrics are in my Stashbusting 2009 Flickr set, and I will add pictures of the projects (which include a hoodie, five dresses, two blouses, two aprons, and more) as they are completed.

I also have some pantry stashbusting planned; I recently reorganized and realized I have seven different kinds of rice (wild, jasmine, sushi, brown basmati, brown nishiki, long-grain brown, and arborio) and six kinds of dried beans (chick peas, lentils, adzuki, pink, small white, and rattlesnake) just waiting to be used, so I'm probably going to do a lot of variations of rice and beans in the comings week. Clearly I have some packrat tendencies. There's nothing wrong with having so many different kinds of rice and beans on hand - each serves its own purpose, and long-term storage isn't a problem - but it's been a while since I've tried to do anything different with these humble and nutritious ingredients. Best of all, they are all cheap, and even cheaper (free) since I already have them on hand. I anticipate lower grocery costs in February while I shop from my own pantry.

Sorta-Stuffed Squash

Here's the stuffed squash post I mentioned last Friday. I call it Sorta-Stuffed Squash because every stuffed squash recipe I've ever seen involves stuffing the squash and then baking it. Sometimes the squash is partially baked first, but it always ends up in the oven after being stuffed with some sort of mixture, usually rice-based. This recipe cheats by cooking the filling separately from the squash and just throwing them together at the end.

You might think cooking the squash and the filling separately is more complicated, but both steps are actually very easy and totally hands-off once you've got them on the heat. After halving the squash and scooping out the seeds, put a pat of butter in the hollow of each half and roast them, cut side up, for about 35 minutes at 400 degrees. The exact time will vary from squash to squash, but they should be tender when you stick a fork in them.



Once the squash is in the oven, make Rebecca Blood's brown rice and lentil recipe, which I've mentioned before. It couldn't be simpler - just lentils, rice, and water - then add salt and/or a little red wine vinegar when it's done. The lentils take about 25-30 minutes to cook, so your squash and your lentils will be done around the same time. Meanwhile, rinse and spin your lettuce, make your dressing, and you've still got twenty minutes to check email, watch the news, or - my favorite - enjoy a glass of wine.

When both the squash and the lentils are ready, scoop the lentils into the squash hollow. Tada! You're done. The rice and lentils absorb some of the melted butter from the squash, and the sweetness of the roasted squash nicely complements the salted, earthy taste of the lentils. This meal is a hat trick: easy, healthy, and cheap.

Smorgasboard!

Here is a shot of that applesauce spice cake I blogged about earlier. Now that I know to build in at least eight hours for the flavor to develop, it's earned a place in my baking arsenal. This time I topped it with - what else? - cream cheese frosting.

This is the beginning of a pot of potato-leek soup I made a few weeks back. It was simple, delicious, and perfect for the gray, rainy days we've been doomed with lately. No picture of the finished soup because it didn't come out well (too late for natural light - the days are getting shorter). I served it with popovers.

Whole-wheat pancakes with walnuts, dried cranberries, and Vermont maple syrup - the perfect beginning for a Saturday. I apologize for the lousy picture quality; this was during the borrowed-camera phase and this particular camera was definitely my least favorite. I'm so glad to have my new Canon now!

Kale and azuki beans is a very simple but delicious and healthy dish. Azuki beans are small, red beans popular in Japan; they are usually sold in the bulk bins at the grocery store. This dish starts with sauteing greens (in this case, fresh kale, but I've used frozen spinach many times before) with a little garlic and oil, then adding the cooked beans. I usually spritz the combo with Bragg's Liquid Aminos, but you could use soy sauce instead. Serve over brown rice and you have a tasty, nutritious, and cheap meal.

And lastly, no food story here, but I snapped this shot at a rest stop on the way back last weekend. This is why I live in New Hampshire.

Out of the Box, Week 14

I'm back! I apologize for the posting drought. After a frustrating month of borrowed cameras, I finally got a new camera and will resume regular posting. These tomatillos came in the box on week 14 (September 19th). I've always been intrigued by tomatillos - their brilliant color! the contrast between smooth skin and papery husk! - but I've never actually tried them. Once again, this CSA has expanded my boundaries.

The weekend the tomatillos arrived, Dan and I went back to Maine for our niece's birthday party. We got in late after picking up my little brother Zach and his girlfriend Maria from the bus station. As I unpacked the CSA box, we all stood around the kitchen chatting. When I pulled out the tomatillos, Maria, who's from Texas, got very excited. She described the flavor as like a tomato, but more tangy and sour - as though infused with lime. This description fueled my excitement, as lime is one of my all-time favorite flavors. If the acid weren't so bad for my teeth, I would eat a whole lime every single day.


I took Maria's advice and decided to use the tomatillos for a green salsa. I was surprised to find the tomatillos were much more firm than tomatoes, but it gave the salsa a nice, chunky texture without too much juice. I husked and sliced three tomatillos and threw them in the mini-Cuisinart with an onion, a jalapeno, a few cloves of garlic, and a squirt of lemon juice. The result was delicious, but way too hot! My mistake was throwing in the whole jalapeno (and some seeds) without testing it first. I've made salsa before with the same kind of jalapeno and found it too mild; I forgot that every pepper can be different.

I first served the tomatillo salsa with burritos filled with brown rice, black beans, and chopped heirloom tomatoes, covered with some cheese and baked in the oven. Because the salsa was so hot, we could only use a little bit at a time. However, we had plenty of leftover beans and rice, so we ate that for lunch a few times with the green salsa mixed in.

While the tomatillo salsa was great, and I would definitely like to experiment more with tomatillos in the future, there was another surprise benefit to this experience. As I went to throw away the waste - tomatillo husks, garlic peels, onion skin, and jalapeno seeds - I suddenly saw a beautiful combination of colors and textures in my hands, and decided a photo shoot detour was necessary before heading to the trash can. Here's a few examples. Now am I crazy, or is this beautiful?





More husk photos here.

Out of the Box, Week 4

We were in such a rush last Thursday to catch the last bus down to Boston that I didn't photograph the produce before we split it up. We took some zucchini, garlic scapes, parsley, and lettuce to Boston for Zach and Maria, and left some zucchini, a summer squash, garlic scapes, turnip greens, and kohlrabi here. I know Maria made zucchini bread with her zucchini. We used our zucchini, along with some sugar snap peas left over from week 3, to make a green risotto.

Last night, we had a friend over for dinner, but we also faced the challenge of trying to use up everything in our fridge, since we're leaving today on a ten-day trip. I sauteed the turnip greens with the garlic scapes in a little olive oil and steamed the remaining zucchini and summer squash. For the main course, I made lentils and brown rice, using Rebecca Blood's recipe, but I added a generous amount of garam masala spice mix. I also served the lentils with thinly sliced onions fried in a little butter and a scoop of plain nonfat yogurt. It might sound strange but the addition of those two condiments takes the meal from something simple, solid, and hearty to a complex and irresistible treat. The sweetness of the onions and the tang of the yogurt against the earthiness of the lentils makes for a surprising luxurious flavor.

For weeks five and six, we'll be out of town, so we've offered our box of veggies to the house that we belonged to in college. I've asked them to let me know what they used them for and to take pictures if possible, so hopefully I'll have an update when I get back. In the meantime, I'm spending the next ten days in New York, North Carolina, and Cape Cod, for a family reunion bookended by two weddings!

I won't be doing much cooking, although at the family reunion, I will be cooking one night. Hopefully that will be preceded by a visit to a coastal North Carolina farmer's market. I'm hoping for peaches. I will also be eating out a lot, so I'll post pictures and reviews in the last week of July, once I'm back here.

Using leftover rice

Even after eating leftover stir fry for lunch Sunday and packing some in Dan's bento for Monday, we still had some jasmine rice left over. The New Moosewood Cookbook's very simple rice pudding recipe is a great way to use up leftovers. Basically, you put two cups of cooked rice with one cup of milk in a saucepan, bring almost to a boil, then simmer for about twenty minutes, or until all the milk is absorbed and the rice is creamy. Then you remove from heat and stir in the seasonings of your choice. I usually use a small squirt of lemon juice, some vanilla extract, cinnamon, nutmeg, and either maple syrup or sugar. It doesn't need much sweetening, and it's a nice, satisfying dessert that is low-fat (at least until you put whipped cream on it, like we usually do).