Sick Day Soups: Chickpea, Kidney Bean, Parsley Soup

Here in Winnipeg there's a small local chain of restaurants called Stella's. Stella's could very well be my favourite place to grab a bite. They have a big menu but they do a Quiche of the Day and two soups and I almost always end up getting the soup and salad because they always sound delicious. I don't think I've ever been disappointed.

A couple of months ago they were featuring a chickpea parsley soup that was delicious but also seemed pretty re-creatable. Today I was having some bloodsugar issues which generally makes me feel pretty under-the-weather for the whole day. My appetite hasn't been great and I was really craving a quick, easy soup. I looked up a couple of recipes but none of them sounded right so I just winged it.

Chickpea Kidney Bean Parsley Soup

• 1 can chickpeas, drained
• 1 can kidney beans, drained
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1/2 bunch fresh parsley, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 4 cups veggie broth
• juice of half a lemon
  
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp olive oil

In a medium pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Saute onions and garlic until soft. Add chickpeas, kidney beans, parsley, veggie broth, salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Bring to a boil and then let simmer for 20-30 minutes. Use a potato masher, food processor, or blender to mix depending on how thick you want the soup. I used a potato masher and it turned out nicely.

This was the perfect meal for a sick day. I know it's only August 10th and extremely hot and humid in Winnipeg, but this already feels kind of like a fall meal. Eeep! August is flying!

Back to Routine with a Classic: Potato Salad

I'm back! June and most of July were very stressful and very busy for me. Luckily from July 20th to August 3rd I was on vacation doing a road trip with Ryan and some friends from Winnipeg - Minneapolis - Chicago - Windsor -Toronto - various provincial campgrounds throughout HWY 17 in Northern Ontario. It was a well deserved break and we got to enjoy some great meals along the way too.

At Chino Latino's in Uptown in Minneapolis. Ryan making silly faces with the remnants of his enchilada.

Chicago Deep Dish Pizza at Giordano's.

Turkey smokies, asparagus, and new potatoes over the campfire on the shores of Lake Superior.

Before our vacation, I had little time or desire to be in the kitchen but now that things have settled down and I'm back to work and my regular routine I've been feeling excited to get into the kitchen again. We got back into the city on July 31st and had a picnic to go to on August 2nd. Now, up until recently I have never liked potato salad. Last year I experimented with a vinaigrette potato salad and found it was alright. A few weeks ago Ryan's aunt made a really nice potato salad that was more along the lines of my taste though. And I recalled Jenn at The Whole Kitchen posting a few different potato salad recipes (which I stole some helpful hints from), so I took all of them into consideration and put together a pretty damn good potato salad. We picked up groceries at The Forks and they had local red potatoes too and fresh local dill and I got to work for the BBQ food. I've come to keeping a jar of the dressing in the fridge most of the time now and just boiling up a bunch of potatoes (whole) in advance to snack on this throughout the week.

A mid-afternoon snack of potato salad with pumkin seeds, honey almonds, gluten free crackers and Tall Grass Prairie Jam, local wild blueberries, green grapes, and cheese from Fenton's.

Mustard Dill Potato Salad

• 3lbs small red potatoes
• 1 cup celery, chopped
• 1/3-1/2 cup toasted sunflower seeds (or pumpkin seeds, or toasted hemp, etc)

Dressing

• 1/4 cup mayo
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1/4 cup fresh dill, chopped (or less if you aren't so dill inclined)
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1/4 cup fresh chives, chopped
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• juice of half a lemon
• 2 1/2 tbsp grainy mustard (experimenting with others is tasty too but this is my favourite so far)
• pepper to taste, I didn't find this needed salt

Put washed, whole potatoes in a large pot of cold water. Bring to a boil, and boil for 10 minutes. Then turn off heat and let potatoes sit fowhr 30 minutes for smaller potatoes, and 35-40 for larger sized ones. Drain, cool, and cut into bite sized pieces - I know some people remove the skins but I think they belong in the salad. Or alternatively, put whole potatoes in fridge and save for use later in the week. Cut up when you're ready to eat it.

Combine dressing ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Either use immediately or put in a container in the fridge for use later in the week. When ready to serve, toss chopped potatoes and celery together. Add dressing and toss - I find I sometimes have a little left over but I like a very light dressing. Before serving, sprinkle the sunflower (flax, hemp, pumpkin, etc) seeds over top. The crunchy seeds are really nice mixed in.

Hiatus

If you haven't already guessed, I'll be taking (and have already) a few weeks off from blogging. June was insane in my personal life both mentally and physically and I'm away most of July and won't be in the kitchen much except while I'm preparing picnic and road trip snacks. I'll return in early August. I have a lot to post about. :)

F.O.O.D. Wednesday: Picnic and BBQ Season!

I have to apologize for my frequent absences lately. I having been feeling great for the past few weeks and more than anything my exhaustion has been keeping me from cooking and blogging. I started seeing a Naturopathic doctor a few weeks ago and had some diagnostic testing done to try and get to the bottom of some of my health issues, including:

• general fatigue and exhaustion
• headaches 3-5 times a week (tension, migraine, or sinus)
• getting physically sick if I get less than 7 hours of sleep 2 nights in a row
• ongoing GI issues
• needing about 9-11 hours of sleep a night to feel well rested
• colds once every 2-3 weeks that last 24-48 hours
• feeling so tired and/or sick that I need to take a day off every 2-3 weeks.
  

The diagnostic test told me I'm allergic to eggs (no surprise there, I get violently ill when I eat them alone but seem to be okay if they're in something else) and soy (this was a surprise). The test is actually pointing to a possible parasite which was really not what I was expecting. I'm seeing my GP on Monday for further testing and to hopefully get a real answer after almost 2 years of this.

But on to happier things. Today I picked up the last food box that we'll share with Shawna and her husband. Shawna will be away next week and then we'll all be away for most of July so there was no point in them continuing with the box. We'll actually only be getting 3 more small sized boxes ourselves. Come July 7th we'll be away for the Winnipeg Folk Festival and then on the 13th we'll be hitting the road for the West Coast. When we return we likely won't start getting the box again until November when the Farmer's Market closes.

Speaking of the Farmer's Market, Ryan and I went out to the opening day in St. Norbert. There wasn't much in the way of produce except for rhubarb, herbs, and lettuce but plenty of folks were selling their wares. Ryan's mom was kind enough to buy us a piece of creamed butter fudge, peanut butter and vanilla, from what I'm pretty sure was Graham's Groves. Oh...my...god...it was the best fudge I've ever had by miles. I'm hoping to make a quick stop in on Saturday and pick up some more and see what else looks good. Last year I'd wanted to get a piece of framed coloured glass but for some reason we didn't end up buying one - so we stopped by Three Wise Crafts: Rustic Charm and picked up some blue stained glass. We hung it in the middle of our living room windows. The owner of the kiosk, Nester Gylywoychuk, saw that I really liked a particular colour of glass but the frame was too large - he said he would look around to see what he could do about getting a smaller piece.

And of course, even though I haven't been cooking a lot, I have been cooking. Unfortunately it looks like it's going to be a wet summer - but the days where the rain has left us alone have been beautiful, sunny, and not too full of mosquito's yet. Today especially is beautiful, clear, and hot - but of course I'm working until 7pm. Tonight we'll be cooking up a top sirloin with some 'taters, salad, and maybe asparagus and green beans that came in today's Fresh Option Box.

But this tasty meal was from a week or two ago already. For Christmas my older brother and niece gave us a countertop grill and I love it. I cooked the home fries in the oven, left the husk on the corn, and cooked the bison burger from Frigs and the corn on the grill at the same time. The whole thing took less than 20 minutes and was a very tasty meal.

Here's hoping that I'll feel up to more regular posting in the next few weeks!

Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen...I'll Leave

Now that I'm working three evenings a week, dinner between Wed-Fri is usually something I've thrown together far in advance. It's so nice when I get to come home and have someone else do all the food-stuff for me. On Thursday I woke up early, got out of the house at 9AM and had some time to kill before I headed to the office.

More and more we're getting into the habit of really letting our food supply run down before we re-stock. I'm finding that we're throwing less away and using what's in our fridge and freezer faster. Things don't end up sitting there for months and for the most part, everything is still reasonably fresh. We ran out of meat products last week, except for some frozen salami, so I used my extra morning time to drive out to Frigs. $70 later our freezer and fridge are re-stocked with sirloin steak, bison burgers, elk smokies, sausages, bison jerky, a chicken, and pork tenderloin.

A lot of people I speak with aren't very familiar with pork tenderloin. I would say aside from pork buttons, it's the most common meat choice at our house. It has virtally no fat, is extremely tender, cooks relatively quickly, is really versatile, and tastes fantastic. After I picked up our meat and quickly stopped at home to put it away, I whipped up our favourite pork marinade and put it in a freezer bag with the tenderloin to marinade all day. When I got to work I emailed Ryan instructions on when and how to cook the meat, asparagus, and fried apples.

Ryan was busy in the kitchen when I arrived home at 7:30PM. I have a bad habit of trying to take over the kitchen when someone else is cooking in it. After I accidentally burned the fried apples and pears I excused myself, set the table, and let Ryan finish up. The burned apples were rescued and turned out fine, the meat was perfect, the asparagus was nicely roasted and a bit crispy (my favourite!) and he even looked up how make mashed potatoes, so we had some very satisfying mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes.

F.O.O.D. Wednesday: Easy Stir Fry

Ah, Wednesday. Every Wednesday morning I drop Ryan off at work and then zip over to Fresh Option to pick up our box. This week we got a nice, typical mix of food. Y'know, the usual stuff - carrots, broccoli, potatoes, tomatoes, etc.

Getting all our produce at once means we have to be strategic with how we use and store it. We've had a lot of problems with veggies going mushy or soft and rubbery in the fridge. I've read this is because too much moisture escapes from the food. I've also seen a lot of different solutions to try and combat this problem and we settled on trying tin foil. I'd actually never heard of storing produce in tin foil but countless sites on the 'net told me it was the way to go.

And it's true! We started doing this not too long after we signed up with Fresh Option and it still surprises me how long it makes food last. Last Wednesday we got a container of spinach. I love spinach but we didn't get a chance to use much of it over the week. By last Thursday it was already starting to turn, only a day after picking it up. My mom's solution to this problem used to be lining the containers with paper towel. I however, washed up all the spinach, rinsed it off, and wrapped it tightly in some tin foil. Even if there's moisture on the leaves, they somehow take forever to turn. I checked to make sure the spinach was still usable this morning and it looks as fresh as it did a week ago. So if you're having issues with your produce going bad too quickly, try using some tin foil and see how it goes.

Speaking of tin foil, I was keeping some carrots, bok coy, and peppers wrapped up and decided to get rid of the leftovers last night. It was a tasty endeavour.

Easy Stir Fry

• 1/2 head broccoli, chopped
  
• 1/2 cup snow peas, cut in 1/2 or thirds
  
• 1/2 cup shredded red cabbage
• 1 bunch bok choy, stocks julienned, leaves sliced thinly
• 1/4 cup sliced water chestnuts
• 1 small onion, sliced thickly
  
• 2 carrots, chopped or julienned
  
• 1 green pepper, thickly sliced
  
• 1-2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or minced
  
• 1/2-1/4 soya sauce, gluten free
  
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce, gluten free
• 2 tbsp peanut oil
  
• optional meat, tofu, fish, etc - I used the last of our leftover beef roast

In a wok or large frying pan heat your oil to about medium. If using meat, add now. If raw, cook fully before adding veggies. I used leftovers so I just heated the meat for a minute or two. Add garlic and onion, sauteing until the onions start to turn translucent. Add soy sauce and oyster sauce and stir. Add the rest of your veggies and stir well. Once well coated, turn the heat down to simmer and cover for 10 minutes. In the meantime, whip up some rice or quinoa, serve the stir fry on top and enjoy!

This was a really easy, basic thing I threw together yesterday but Ryan really loved it. I wasn't even planning to post the recipe but I figured it was so easy and maybe someone out there needs an easy stir fry recipe.

Tonight I'm looking forward to stopping off at The Forks to pick up some sun dried and kalamata olives as well as some feta cheese from Fenton's. We still have leftover spinach from last week and I picked up some lettuce so I'm thinking about a nice greek salad with grilled chicken breast. We also got strawberries again this week! Last time the strawberries tasted amazing. Maybe I'll pick up some whipping cream and we can just have strawberries and whipped cream for dessert.

I also STILL haven't figured out gardening stuff either. I let it slip by the wayside and now it's THE long weekend - I mean the one where everyone plants their gardens. I could have done it weeks ago but that's what happens when you procrastinate. I'll have an update soon though!

F.O.O.D. Wednesdays

Now that my routine is getting more normal I had some time over the weekend to do some cooking. I've been fairly busy in the kitchen and feeling more inspired again. In the last week I've:

• broken down a chicken, and froze all but one breast that we ate last week


• made 18 cups of chicken stock that I've been freezing, giving away, and using too


• made the new salsa


• used 6 or 7 cups of stock to make my lemon rice soup


• made pancakes


• and last night cooked a standing prime rib roast, gravy, mashed potatoes, salad, and fiddleheads

I don't know about everywhere else, but Winnipeg has had some not-so-great weather for the last week or two. All the rain has made everything beautifully green and trees are flowering but it's so hard to motivate yourself to do anything when it's so gray out. I spent most of my time running around between work and my volunteer position and then coming home and crashing in front of the TV watching episodes of The Wire, 30 Rock, and Weeds. Very productive. But the weekend is supposed to lovely! It's supposed to be +14 today and they're hoping for mid-twenties by Sunday. There's something about the shining sun that just motivates me. I even went for a run yesterday after a much-too-long-hiatus.

I've also, again, been eating out a lot more. Since I'm realizing that I'm quite a busy person I've been trying to make more lunch or dinner dates. On Monday I took my mom out to Viva, our very favourite Vietnamese restaurant that I know I've mentioned. I think I've been there once a month since November. They have the best spring rolls I've ever had. We don't like to deal with the crowds on Mother's Day so I saw her on Saturday and took her out on Monday and we spent the afternoon hanging out and shopping together. Yesterday my friend Aimee came and picked me up from work to eat at Mondragon. I can't get enough of that Southern Fried Tofu sandwich, gluten-free of course.

Tonight we're going to enjoy some leftover hot roast beef sandwiches and maybe a spinach salad. Between the leftover produce from last week, and the goodies we I picked up today I'm thinking a nice stir fry needs to be cooked up. We've got bok choy, snow peas, broccoli, beef, broccoli sprouts, peppers, carrots, and celery.