Strawberry Rhubarb Hand Pies

The farmer's market is open and I finally got to go.  I bought rhubarb, strawberries, and asparagus.  I don't make pie for almost the entire rest of the year, but ever since I discovered strawberry rhubarb pie a few summers ago, I make at least 2-3 pies in a 1 month period. 

 

Last year, at the end of strawberry season, I saw a recipe for hand pies.  I didn't have time to make any more pies, so when I came home with two pints of strawberries and a batch of rhubarb yesterday, I got to work on these guys.

 

I didn't do the egg wash on top and I didn't have any orange zest.  I think they would be better if they had something on top of the pies, and I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that they were worth it, work-wise, but since I now have a tupperware of them in my office instead of having to go home to eat pie, they certainly win on transportability. 

 

Any other good hand pie recieps out there?

 

English Lasagna (Freezer Meal)

I have gotten super-into freezer meals lately.  I'm dying to try Once a Month Mom, but I haven't had a chance yet to completely clear the freezer.  Once we have a house and a chest freezer though, oh man.

Anyway, when the Snowquester Storm hit, I hunkered down and spent the morning making freezer meals.  I did an enchilada casserole, which was mediocre, and I made an English Lasagna, which was spectacular.  I'm on the hunt for more good vegetarian ideas, if you have any to share.  I currently have a frozen baked ziti and a frozen fried rice meal all set to go, but I'm trying really hard to make sure we always have something to pull out and thaw when we don't have time to cook.

English Lasagna is made with a creamy bechamel sauce instead of ricotta cheese.  Or in addition to.  I didn't have any ricotta, and it was raining so I didn't go get any, so I improvised a bit.  It was so delicious that when we thawed it and cooked it, my husband ate my leftovers.

Ingredients (makes four servings in a loaf pan, double the cheese/milk if you want to use an 8x8):
-one package no-bake lasagna noodles
-one package veggie crumbles (or you can use real meat, but I don't know how to cook that, or how much to use - I guess half a pound?)
-two cups shredded cheddar cheese (plus more for topping)
-two cups milk
-2 tbsp butter
-2 tbsp flour
-half an onion, chopped
-a few cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 cup tomato sauce

Preheat oven to 350 even if you are freezing this for later (it's best to cook the pasta before freezing).
1.) Saute onion and garlic together until translucent.  Add veggie crumbles and tomato sauce.
2.) Saute butter and flour together until flour is brown.  Add milk and stir frequently until sauce thickens.
3.) Add cheddar cheese and melt.
4.) Layer no bake noodles, "meat" and top with bechamel sauce.  Continue until you have reached the top of the pan (I like to use thin layers and a lot of noodles.)
5.) Top everything with cheddar cheese and some extra tomato sauce, if you have any.
6.) Bake at 350 for 45 minutes, covered with foil.  Then allow to cool, cover the foil with saran wrap, and freeze.
7.) To reheat, thaw for 24ish hours and heat in 350 degree oven for 1 hour.  (Keep foil on for first 45 minutes, then remove for the last 15 minutes.)

Any other freezer meal suggestions?

What I've Been Cooking

Some of the latest recipes I have tried and enjoyed include:

Slow Cooker Black Bean Enchiladas - we didn't have corn, so I subsituted green pepper.  It was still pretty tasty.  I also used whole wheat tortillas and you couldn't tell.  This would be a great recipe for a chicken/veggie household because you could divide your crock in half with foil to separate the two.

Pecan Encrusted Salmon - seriously amazing.  We've been using a lot more nuts in our cooking, and this is recipe that is going to become a regular.

Slow Cooker Indian Spiced Chickpea Quinoa Stew - this was just so easy to put together.  I didn't have turnips or celery so just used other veggies we had on hand, which included onions.  I also found that it was somewhat lacking in flavor, so I added more salt and a dash of heavy cream, which made it pretty delicious.

Pecan Quinoa Stuffing - our acorn squash went bad before I made this, so Mr. Barefoot roasted up some sweet potatos and we had it with that.  Like I said, we've been using more nuts.

I found pretty much all of these recipes on Pinterest, which I both like and dislike as a search engine.  I like it because it allows me to sidestep all the spammy responses I get from Google that take me to sites which then force me to search again and only have terrible recipes.  I dislike it because when you google an ingredient, sometimes you just get a pretty picture of brussels sprouts and sometimes you get 300 of the same brussels sprouts recipe.  Does anyone have any way around that?

Vegetarian Thanksgiving: Baked Potato Bar

I have been meaning to write this post for forever, but I didn't have the pictures. I still don't but I want to get it up anyway. We threw a baked-potato bar party over the summer, and at the end, I turned to Mr. Barefoot and said, "this would make a great thanksgiving!"

For a baked potato bar party, it's a super-simple concept that is really easy to make potluck and vegetarian or even vegan - we provided potatoes, greek yogurt, sour cream, butter, and spices, and everybody else brought toppings for both regular and sweet potatoes. We had black bean vegetarian chili, pulled pork, candied pecans, cheddar cheese, bacon bits, etc. For Thanksgiving, you could add roasted turkey, cranberry sauce, corn salsa or creamed corn, mac& cheese, green beans, and all manner of vegetables.

I love this as a vegetarian concept because nobody has to bring meat, and you end up with a holiday that doesn't revolve around meat. It's also novel enough that people won't complain as much about there not being a turkey. It's also great for people who are not very experienced cooks, because it's pretty hard to screw up baked potatoes. Just put a bunch on a cookie sheet and bake them for awhile. If you do eat meat, but don't cook very well, I personally would crockpot roast some drumsticks or something, and shred them to be a topping, but you could also provide roasted drumsticks as a side dish to avoid cooking a full bird. It also would be a great idea for a side dish if you do want to host a meal with a beautiful turkey, but don't want to put in the work to do multiple side dishes - a few potatoes go in the oven as soon as the turkey comes out, and while it rests, they bake, and everything is ready to go at once.

It also makes a great Thanksgiving leftovers brunch idea - because what leftovers aren't better on a roasted sweet potato? Minimal work, maximum fun - that's my kind of holiday!

What are you doing for a vegetarian (or carnivorous) thanksgiving?

Disaster Preparedness

I hope everybody is okay and safe and your families and loved ones are all well.  We got very lucky here in Baltimore and survived the storm unscathed, with power intact and only a slight leak in the ceiling.  But I wanted to address the issue of disaster preparedness - after the derecho in June, it occurred to me that we were ill-prepared to spend a week without power.  So when they started calling for Sandy, I wondered what we should do.

I think you all know how I feel about canned goods.  So it probably isn't a surprise that when I went to consider what we had in stock in case Sandy knocked out our power, we didn't have much. A few cans of soup, a few foil packets of Indian dinners.  Pretty much everything needs to be cooked.  We have an electric stove and a propane campstove.  We don't usually lose power - and when we do, it never makes sense - so we are more concerned about things like our roof staying on and our car not getting hit by a falling stop sign. But a little bit of disaster preparedness never hurt anybody, especially if the grocery stores can't be restocked for awhile.

When I woke up Saturday, I felt sick, so I dragged the husband to the store to pick up soup and Spaghetti Os, in case of disaster and mostly because I wanted them.  We went to buy bottled water and couldn't find any. (When we got home, we just filled a couple spare pitchers and all of our reusable water bottles.  We contemplated what other stuff we might need, and wound up buying taco tortillas because we keep Tasty Bite Madras Lentils in the pantry, and they make surprisingly good cold tacos (great camping food).  I also picked up a few cans of baked beans and some more canned soup.

We happen to have crackers and peanut butter leftover from our last camping trip, and we picked up some more snack food and some juice (I drink a lot of juice when I get sick).  We have a few cans of Trader Joe's tuna - that and the Sustainable Seas tuna is the only kind I will eat - and a bunch of cans of beans, which is kind of all we have for protein.

My dad said that we can use our propane stove in the fireplace, which does vent properly.  This means we can cook the package of fondue that we have

In the future, we will probably start keeping a regular "emergency kit".  I'm not really sure what should go in it - maybe one or two gallon jugs of water, a three day supply of canned goods (Spaghetti O's, tuna, peanut butter, a few Go Picnic meals, canned beans and soup, foil packets of tastybite Indian Entrees, nuts/seeds), a couple of flashlights, a pack of baby wipes/antibacterial wipes, and a spare batteries for the camping lantern. All of these things, except water, are things we will cycle through anyway, so maybe it would make sense to get a collapsible jug instead - which could be something we take camping.

Any other suggestions for what we should keep in our "emergency kit"?  What do you make sure you always have on hand?

Mrs. Veggie and Mr. Meat

I have a friend who came over for dinner last week and she expressed a bit of frustration at the fact that her husband not only eats mostly meat, but he's a picky eater with a pretty limited palate.  She's a vegetarian and he isn't, so I'm a bit familiar with their situation.  I made a couple of suggestions for meals that could easily accommodate meat, like curries and stir fries.  But I kept thinking about it and I feel like there must be a wealth of possibilities for meals that you can do two ways, and also don't require my friend to prepare meat. I'm starting with a lot of convenience food suggestions, which is an easy transition for people used to ordering takeout.

Here's a sample menu plan & shopping list for a week:
-Burgers & fries with salad
-Curry
-Barbecue (Lentils for her, pre-made pulled pork for him, barbecue carrots on the side)
-Frittata/Torta Espanola 
-Stir fry (with baked tofu for her and chicken for him)

Shopping List-
Burgers and Fries
-1 bag frozen sweet potato fries
-1 package veggie burgers
-1 package meat burgers
-1 package hamburger buns (these will also be used for barbecue night)

Curry
-1 bag frozen peas
-1 bag carrots (also for barbecue)

-Curry powder, coriander, tumeric
-4 medium potatoes (need 8 total)
-1 can coconut milk
-Onion (need 5 total)
-Frozen chicken strips or a rotisserie chicken (use in both the curry and the stir fry)


Stir Fry
-2 bell peppers
-1 container sliced mushrooms or another pre-prepared vegetable for stir fry
-snow peas or green beans or another green vegetable
-1 bottle of stir fry sauce/marinade or 1 bottle soy sauce and 1 bottle sweet and sour sauce (combine equal parts for an easy marinade)
-1 box extra firm tofu
-onion (need 5 total)

Frittata
-Eggs
-3-4 Potatoes (need 8 total)
-Onions (need 5 total)
-Plain Greek Yogurt (use instead of cream)

Barbecue
-Lentils (brown)
-Barbecue sauce
-pre-prepared Pulled Pork
-Onion (need 5 total)



Anyone have any other suggestions for meals for my friend?  What are your favorite carnivore-pleasing vegetarian meals?

Falafel Tacos

I like falafel alot, but it's time consuming to make.  Recently I had a delicious falafel taco, and it occurred to me that deconstructed falafel tacos are definitely the way to go.  So I took the falafel ingredients from The Meat Lovers Meatless Cookbook and popped them in the crockpot, then made tacos. 

Ingredients:
2 cups chickpeas (dried and soaked, or a can of dried chickpeas)
1 small onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 tps baking powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp dried cilantro
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cracked pepper
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
Tortillas
Greek yogurt, dill
Tomato, sliced thinly

Procedure:
1. Combine chickpeas, onion, and garlic in food processor and pulse until well combined. 
2. Add remaining ingredients, continue to pulse until spices are evenly distributed.
3. Spray crockpot with olive oil. (Alternatively, spray a 9x13 pan and preheat the oven to 350). 
4. Cook on low 4-6 hours or high 3-4 hours or until crispy/crunchy and warm through. 
5.  Combine greek yogurt and dill until dill is dispersed in yogurt. 
6. Fill tortillas with falafel, greek yogurt, and tomato. 

Enjoy!