Menu Plan Monday January 26

Posted on January 26, 2009 by Cheryl Harris

I got Manda's email saying that this week's food was licorice as I was eating bunch of sauteed fennel. If I had realized, I would have waited! I didn't want to repeat it again this week, so I will do my best to make anise flavored cookies (fingers crossed!!). If not, there IS some fennel in the garam masala, although I do understand that's pushing it a bit.

I really love the flavor of licorice, and you can buy a wide range of GF licorices. Yum!

Never in my life did I think I’d say this, but here goes…for a millisecond, I wished I lived in Toronto. For someone like me who hates the cold, that’s beyond Why, you may ask? Because Ricki is giving away home baked goodies from her new cookbook, but only to locals. Those further out may have to
“settle” for Ritter sport bars.
Monday:
Garam Masala chicken and Gingery Soup

Tuesday:
vegan
Crunchy and Creamy Beans and greens (for the monthly Adopt a GF Blogger event)

Weds:
quick and easy…
Turkey cutlets in tomato sauce with steamed broccoli

Thursday:
vegan
Quinoa with arugula winter pesto

Friday:
I dunno…leftovers?

Baked good:
I will definitely be making the Daring Baker challenge (but alas, not for me…making it vegan/grain/sugar free seems to be way too hard)
Anise cookies (maybe)

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Arugula Winter Pesto

Posted on January 25, 2009 by Cheryl Harris

arupesto

This is barely a recipe, but it is tasty! Lately, quick and easy have been the primary food criteria around these parts.  This pesto fits the bill, and works to make anything taste yummier. I use it as a dip for raw veggies, and add it to quinoa, steamed veg, fish, etc.  I use less oil than I do for a regular pesto because it’s been bothering my poor sensitive tummy, but feel free to sub more olive oil for the water for a more traditional pesto.

And as a bonus, DH doesn’t seem to realize that he’s eating veggies…

5oz package of arugula, well washed
1/2 cup water* (see headnote)
1/4 cup olive oil (or more)
1/2 lemon, squeezed
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2-1 clove of garlic, optional
1/2 cup pitted Kalamata olives
1/2 cup toasted walnuts, pine nuts or a mix

Put arugula, water, oil, lemon and salt in the food processor and blend until smooth. Add in olives and nuts and blend, leaving it as chunky or smooth as you like!

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Menu Plan Monday Jan 19th

Posted on January 18, 2009 by Cheryl Harris

yinyangWhat a week to stay snuggled and bundled up! When I mentioned to friends that our cats tend to do the “furry yin yang” in the winter months, I was met with blank stares. So this is what it looks like, even though we may need to put “yin” on a diet…. Moral of the story is that when the world gets cold, snuggle up! I’ll have to work on that advice.

Book of Yum is our host for this week, and her pick of lentils or dal is perfect for this chill. I’ve been eating more than my share of dal in the form of Amy’s Curried Lentil soup, though I haven’t made dal myself. However, I just got a copy of Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything and will be trying his recipe for dal. And, of course, once I see all the other lovely posts, I’ll have to search through for inspiration.

When I’m not cooking, or eating, I’m talking to other people about food. I’m a Registered dietitian in Alexandria, VA. I’m hosting a healthy recipe contest, so if you’re interested in submitting a recipe and winning some fun prizes, hop on over! Due to the cost of shipping, winners must be in the US or Canada (sorry!)

Monday:
Thai Beef curry with broccoli (didn’t make it last week)

Tuesday:
Dal with papadams and roast cauliflower with cumin seeds

Weds:
Roast turkey with pureed fennel soup

Thursday:
odds and ends:
Asian style gingery soup
Maybe quinoa?

Friday:
Garam masala chicken
artichokes with a lemony flax dipping sauce

Baked goods of the week:
to be honest, my appetite has been tiny lately, hence the scarcity of recipe posts! I’m thinking of making a meringue from Susan O’Brien’s Gluten free sugar free cooking for friends. For me, maybe hazelnut mesquite cookies. We shall see.

Posted in cat pictures, contest, menu plan | 9 Comments

Menu Plan Monday January 12th

Posted on January 11, 2009 by Cheryl Harris

localfoods

I was surprised by Ginger’s pick of “locally grown” for this week’s menu swap. It IS much harder to get locally grown foods in the middle of winter, but that’s extra reason to support local farmers! Hopefully we can do this one again during summer months, too. My goal was to get something locally grown each day, and I think it’ll work.

This was an amazing excuse to head to the only local Farmer’s Market that is open: Arlington Farmer’s Market. My bounty is pictured above. I was so glad to get Gold Rush apples. They’re absolutely amazing and have been an addiction for the last year or so. I had been hoarding my last one, and was delighted to get a bunch more.

aru

My menu features locally grown foods, and a few from my own garden. Currently, I have collards outside, which have been mostly devoured by the rabbit, some parsley, carrots, onion shoots and thyme, rosemary, sage, tarragon, lavender, and a little oregano, too . Inside, I have arugula (a little), cilantro and a bunch of dormant plants: an artichoke plant, a peach tree, a kaffir lime, a curry plant, and lemongrass.

Monday:
Chicken soup leftovers, featuring locally grown carrots and parsley and carrot tops from my garden
Curried chicken with locally grown collards

Tuesday:
Nightshade stew (frozen tomatoes from my garden)

Weds:
Vegan
socca with pesto (frozen)

Thursday:
Trout with almonds and broccoli
amazing Gold Rush apples

Friday:
Beef in a Thai Curry Sauce (peppers from my garden)

Baked good:
brownies: either these Brazil Nut Brownies or super decadent recipe for vegan brownies that’s totally TDF

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Quick and Easy Asian Style Gingery Soup

Posted on January 10, 2009 by Cheryl Harris

gingsoupThis is a quick and and easy recipe that I turn to when I have a sore throat. It is in no way authentically Asian (or authentically anything, for that matter!) I find it very satisfying, and very low maintenance. A good broth or stock is a must. I tend to use home made. Problem is, once you use home made, it’s hard to go back to the store bought stuff!

I must admit that putting lettuce in soup was a random inspiration and it works oddly well. Try it before you rule it out! The amounts of onion and lettuce totally depend on whether I’m in the mood for a broth-y soup or a heartier soup. You really can’t go wrong.

3-4 cups good quality broth or stock
1 inch of fresh ginger, cut into 1/8 inch slices
1/2 medium onion, cut into 1/8 inch ribbons
1 head romaine lettuce heart, coarsely chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

Bring broth to a boil, add in ginger and onions and simmer 35-40 min or until onions are tender. Add in lettuce and cook until wilted and dark green, 7-8 more minutes. Remove ginger chunks (unless you are VERY brave!), adjust salt and pepper and enjoy! whb3

I’m serving up this soup for Weekend Herb Blogging, as originated by Kalyn of Kalyn’s Kitchen. Haalo is currently the WHB “mom” and our host this week is Pam from The Backyard Pizzarea.  Pam’s photos are lovely!

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Menu Plan Monday Jan 5th–Soup!

Posted on January 4, 2009 by Cheryl Harris

bowl-o-tsoup1I hope you all had great New Year’s celebrations and look forward to seeing the yummy food that went along with it!

This week’s theme is soup, because I love soup. Soup is the best part of winter months. It’s also the silver lining to colds and sore throats. At the risk of sounding like the shrimp scene from Forrest Gump, there are so many great kinds of soup! Tomato soup, chicken soup, turkey soup, sorrel soup, red pepper soup, beef soup, Asian ginger soup…and those are just the ones I’ve eaten this past month. I’ve gone through most the supply in my freezer that was supposed to take me through the winter. I guess that just means that it’s really time to kick this cold!

The heart of really good soup is amazing broth. While I make some great vegan soups, I have never mastered the art of a really good vegan broth, mostly because the key is older veggies and using the skins, and that tends to cause my mold issues to flare. So most of my experience making broths are chicken and turkey based. They’re as easy as can be–it just takes time (a lot of it!)

Here’s a link to my GF newsletter for January, which is on label reading and the “may contains” statements. There’s a comment period for FDA which expires Jan 14th, so if you have an opinion, time is short!

Monday:
Turkey soup with cabbage
Turkey cutlets (maybe)

Tuesday:
Vegan
Garlicky quinoa and broccoli, with an avocado

Wednesday:
Buffalo burgers and roasted peppers

Thursday:
Curry chicken with roasted cauliflower

Friday:
Leftovers

Saturday:
CHICKEN SOUP!!!!!

Baked goods:
Sugar free peppermint meringues and a Chai breakfast cake

Let’s have a peek around the web:
Elizabeth, of A modern gal is joining us for the first time (welcome, Elizabeth) and the intent to clean out her freezer! I should really try that, and my DH would be all over the Indonesian spicy rice, so I hope she shares the recipe!

Wendy from Celiacs in the House has a crock pot heavy week, which is such a great way to get things done easily in the winter. Her black bean soup sounds delish. She’s new to MPM, too, and hopefully will stick with our happy little group. It really DOES help organize things!

Esther drops in with a great looking menu and  and she’s juggling a small one, school and life.  Easier said than done!  As usual, she draws her inspiration from different cookbooks and is focusing more on baking since GF foods are so expensive!  Hopefully she’ll share results with us.

M-Elle of Cooking and uncooking is in the midst of snowy weather.  She  is also back to work and school, so she’s keeping things basic.  M-elle, you can come for dinner if I can have a falafel sandwich!

Seamaiden of Book of Yum joins us with a luscious looking piece of pumpkin bar and a beautiful cat pic to boot.  I’m intrigued by the grilled fennel, because I’m currently braising fennel and I’ve never tried grilling!  She’s also recently posted her Daring Baker Yule log, too, which looks gorgeous.

Manda is sporting a new blog look this week.  She’s not a soup kind of gal, but she does appreciate a good stew.  She does, however have Mulligatawny Soup on the menu which I’ve always been tempted by but never made.

Kimberly at Gluten Free is Life has joined us, too (wow, full house this week!).  She just happens to be making crockpot taco soup.  Her goal is to make a recipe from Carol Fenster’s 1001 GF recipes cookbook a week…which should hold her a good long time.

Angela is quite the soup and crock potting gal, and she joins us with a yummy looking week.  I’d take the smashed cauliflower, the dijon chicken…you get the idea.  She’s also got a nice new look on her site.

Ginger of Fresh Ginger had me drooling from the first soup picture.  Her Vietnamese style fried rice with lemongrass sounds intriguing.

Karen from GF Sox Fan is joining us again! (yay!)  She’s got a beautiful onion soup recipe with a nice picture, too.

By the way, if anyone wants to host, just drop me a line…

Posted in menu plan, news | 22 Comments

French Yule Log–A Daring Baker Challenge

Posted on December 29, 2008 by Cheryl Harris

yuleThis month’s challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.  They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.

I love being a Daring Baker…usually. But when I saw all 19 pages of this month’s recipe, I was a wee bit intimidated! Currently, I’m gluten, dairy, egg, corn, and soy free, and more recently, I’ve had to avoid sugar and grains, too. Given my limitations, sometimes I just make something for DH or friends, but I was doing so much cooking for other people I wanted something for ME.

Once I started thinking about it, it did seem (sort of) doable. The required elements are:hazcake
1) Dacquoise Biscuit
2) Mousse
3) Ganache Insert
4) Praline (Crisp) Insert
5) Creme Brulee Insert
6) Icing

I just couldn’t wrap my brain around the creme brulee without dairy, eggs, soy or sugar, so I confess, I left it out. I know it was required…but with all of my limitations, 5 out of 6 ain’t bad. Everything else was there, at least in spirit.

ganache

I must say, I had pretty low expectations. I’d been fighting a bug most of December, and it got pushed off till the last minute. And yet, everything turned out beautifully, and I would definitely do it again, or parts of it.  It ended up tasting a lot like ice cream cake, and it traveled down beautifully in a cooler.  All I would have done differently is leaving layers to freeze longer so that the layers had a lot more differentiation.  I would have made more chocolate icing, too!  I brought it along with me to NC, and way underestimated the amount of chocolate I’d need.  Since the stores were closed, I just drizzled the icing on rather than making a cohesive coating.

cyule

Since I had so little time and no clue of what I was doing, I don’t have recipes.  I did write down the dacquoise recipe (picture above) but (by itself) it wasn’t very good.  The mousse is a mix of young coconut, hazelnut, cocoa powder, agave, cinnamon, pineapple and chia whipped in my Vitamix.  I almost chickened out on the crisp insert, then reminded myself that I am a DARING baker and made a hazelnut meal/agave/chia/mesquite crispy cracker-ich layer.  The ganache (picture above on right) was baker’s chocolate with thick hazelnut cream and vegetable glycerine, and the icing was baker’s chocolate, glycerine and almond oil.

So it just goes to show how nice it is to go out on a limb, be daring and try something new!  I’m so glad that most of the DB challenges have been do-able, especially considering the number of restrictions I have.   I would like to play with the veganized agar frosting version in the future, and plan to make this into a faux ice cream cake next time.  Thanks so much to our brave leaders, and bring on the next one, baby!

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Menu Plan Monday Dec 22nd

Posted on December 21, 2008 by Cheryl Harris

holiday

As you can see, things have been busy at Chez Harris. I always end up baking more than I mean to, and this year is no exception. I’m glad that I’ve avoided huge excess, though! This week was a Chocolate Orange Cake, rugelach (yummy but totally oozed), chocolate covered pom, chocolate covered dried fruit, chocolate covered clementines (perhaps you are detecting a pattern…) and fruit and nut bars. We ate food, too, including a Summertime Salad, and since I’m fighting a cold I think I had soup every day!

This week we’ll be traveling, and I’m glad for the opportunity to figure out what we’ll be eating so I’m not scrambling last minute. Our food of the week are cranberries, and our host is the fabulous Angela of Angela’s Kitchen.

Monday:
Roast turkey breast with roasted peppers

Tuesday:
Garlicky quinoa with broccoli

Weds:
Salmon or curry lentil soup (Amy’s) with veg TBD
Roasted cauliflower–it’s a great car food, no idea why.

Thursday:
Monday’s turkey breast which will be frozen and trucked along with us, along with celery in a chestnut sauce and hopefully cranberry relish, too.

Friday:
Avocado and Tomato and Sorrel soup (from my freezer)

Baked goods:
the DB challenge. Regretfully, it didn’t happen last week
Chocolate chestnut cake

This week’s goal is not to get any speeding tickets. I pointed out to my DH yesterday that every time we go to NC, we get a ticket. He was kind enough to mention that last time, no tickets, but we got rear ended. I think perhaps that no driving drama is a better goal. I hope everyone has a great

Posted in menu plan | 3 Comments

Everything just tastes better when covered in chocolate

Posted on December 20, 2008 by Cheryl Harris

chocpomI’ve had been under the weather this month, necessitating some ingenuity to whip up some tasty allergen friendly treats that are super easy to make. My three favorites? Chocolate covered pomegranate seeds, chocolate covered clementines and pistachio brittle (pumpkin seed brittle, just sub in pistachios). Easy, elegant, low stress, and huge on taste. Vegan and top 8 allergen free too! Totally my style.clem

I don’t know where I first got the idea of coating pom seeds with chocolate, but I couldn’t resist giving it a try, and it couldn’t be easier! The idea for dipping clementines is from a grad school friend, Michelle, who is an amazing hostess.

If you’re not a huge pom fiend, you should be. IMHO, they’re the yummiest winter fruit and chock full of antioxidants and, of course, flavor. According to Greek mythology, we’re stuck with winter because Persephone, daughter of the goddess of the Harvest was kidnapped and taken off to the underworld. She was miserable, and didn’t eat but couldn’t resist pom seeds! Rules are if you eat in the underworld, you stay. So when she is stuck “down there” we’re all stuck up here with winter, as the goddess of the harvest is mourning. Now here I thought I didn’t learn anything in junior high. Funny what sticks in your head.

Giving recipes for these is almost a joke, but here goes! Melt chocolate. Add fruit. Allow to cool. Accept compliments and smile.

Here’s a bit more detail:
1/2 cup pomegranate seeds
3 oz bittersweet chocolate

Heat chocolate in a glass bowl in the microwave, stirring every 30 sec (it takes about 2 min total). A double boiler works too, but I’m WAY too lazy. Allow to cool for 1-2 minutes. Stir in pom seeds thoroughly, drop onto wax paper or muffin liners. Allow to cool at room temp. You can put them in the fridge but they won’t look as nice.

I didn’t measure the amount of chocolate for the clementines, but I dipped one half in semi sweet and allowed them to cool on wax paper.
WHB is the baby of Kalyn’s Kitchen, and now our kind hostess is Haalo. Did you see her cherry coconut slice? Looks delish!

Have a relaxing and delicious holiday season!!!

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Summer Lovin’ salad

Posted on December 18, 2008 by Cheryl Harris

simple-salad

I’m a springtime and summer kinda gal, and the winter months tend to get me down.  This salad is small a taste of summertime goodness to remind me of what I’m (eventually) looking forward to!  And this was such a bright and sunny day, too.

This non-recipe is very simple, and uses arugula from my (mini) indoor garden and roasted tomatoes that I made and roasted this summer.

3 cups arugula leaves
1-2 tablespoons of olive oil (may not be needed if your tomatoes are packed in oil)
juice of half a lemon or balsamic vinegar to taste
black pepper and sea salt to taste
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
1/2 avocado, sliced
handful of roasted tomatoes, chopped or whole

Mix arugula, oil, salt, pepper, and lemon. Add other ingredients on top and enjoy! Best if eaten in the first hour of preparing, otherwise the arugula gets soggy.

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