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Posts tagged ‘apples’

The frozen chosen chow down

Just some of the salad bounty on our groaning board. Maybe you can see the homemade corn muffins in the foreground.

Have I mentioned how much we like to eat at First Prez in Statesville NC? No more than 30 or 40 times? Well, it’s something we are REALLY good at.

When, for instance, we had an after-church salad luncheon to welcome our minister back from a three-month sabbatical, I was expecting lettuce leaves and not much else. Well, we had too many substantial salads to count, plus an ice cream sundae bar.

Who leaves a salad bar stuffed? Presbyterians, that’s who. One of my favorite people even brought a Snickers salad which sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s real and even contains a wee bit of nutritious stuff.  I took Patricia Cornwell’s (used to work at the Charlotte Observer with her) wild rice salad and my cousin Susan’s wheat berry salad with feta and cucumbers. More importantly, I got the Snickers salad recipe from Pam N.

My salads were good, sturdy and  healthy. (My friend Pat S. said the wild rice dish was her favorite of the day so I had to give credit to the creator of medical examiner Kay Scarpetta). The Snickers salad, naturally, if the one I intend to make for Thanksgiving.

BTW, I have a new system for filing recipes which maybe will work. All you need if a couple of filing cabinet drawers, lots of hanging files and labels. I cut out or reprint the recipes I want to try and file them, which almost always leads to me making yet another folder because I realize I’ve been collecting a new category without realizing it. I try to file two to three times per week. You can pack away a passel of paper in 10 to 15 minutes.

When it’s time to think about menus/recipes for the week ahead, I go into appropriate folders and pull out two or three to try. I’m actually using some of the saved recipes, and we’re eating some new dishes. Win-win.

Just now, for instance, while looking for the Snickers recipes I found an old Southern Living clip – a harvest salad with cider vinaigrette that looks wonderful (red pears, dried apricots and figs and raisins, red onion, jicama, fresh spinach, toasted nuts and blue cheese crumbles). Think we’ll try it in a few days. Meanwhile, what does it say about my eating habits that the fattest folder by far is CAKES?

Patricia Cornwell’s wild rice salad with cashews

1 cup uncooked wild rice

4 cups chicken broth

3 tablespoons olive oil

1-1/2 cups chopped fresh sweet peppers, the more colorful the better

3/4 cup cashews, coarsely chopped

2 green onions, sliced

Dressing: 3 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar or apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon dark sesame oil

1 clove garlic, minced

1/4 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground pepper to taste

In colander, rinse wild rice. Drain well. In saucepan, bring rice and broth to boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 45 to 50 minutes or until rice is tender. Drain any excess liquid. 

Meanwhile, in medium skillet, heat 3 tablespoons oil for sauteeing. Add peppers and cook for 3 to 5 minutes or until tender. Add cashews and green onions. Keep on heat for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring, or until nuts begin to brown. In salad bowl, combine wild rice with pepper-cashew mixture.

To make dressing, combine vinegar, oils, garlic, salt and pepper in jar with tight-fitting lid. Shade well and pour over salad, tossing to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Before you go hog-wild on this good-for-you (8 g protein, 3 g fiber) dish, know that a serving or one-sixth of the recipe contains 350 calories and 22 g fat (no cholesterol, though).  Of course, half of that (or even less) is what you’ll get at our church!

Despite the cost of wild rice, I could eat this every week

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snickers salad

1 8-ounce container whipped topping (use reduced-fat if you want to feel virtuous — hah!)

3 to 4 Granny Smith apples, washed, cored and diced

3 regulation-size Snickers bars, mashed into bits, which means some will fly onto your apron which means you’ll have to taste to make sure they’re OK

Mix the three ingredients and chill, covered, for an hour or two. Not much longer, though, or it can get runny.

Category:

Fruit, Organizing recipes, Potlucks, Rice, Salad, Simple foods

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Roasting/sauteeing produce just past its prime

 

The pitbull's idea of sharing a chair

Nothing like a nice relaxing 20 minutes of yoga on the floor with a 70-pound pitbull who thinks I’m down there to play and a brain-damaged, chatty cat who thinks I’m down there to play pillow.

The yoga and 15 minutes of weight work, plus a 30-minute bike ride in the freezing rain let me tuck into salmon-soy-ginger patties and whole wheat Israeli couscous with currants and toasted pine nuts for supper. Exercise is the surest way I know to avoid snacking in the late afternoon, and the earlier in the day I do it, the more likely I am not to squander that work on some refined carbs.

While I was “relaxing” in savasana (corpse pose), I was remembering being a gleaning coordinator for the Society of St. Andrew, a hunger ministry, and how the gleaners and I used to talk about we knew “how to use a paring knife.” Bruises and blemishes, in other words, didn’t deter us from using the produce we picked from farmers’ fields and orchards.

But without playing fast and loose with food safety, there’s another trick to using produce that’s just past its glory, and that is roasting or sauteeing. Baby carrots, for instance, which so often taste like chair legs

Carrots are charred in spots, tender and sweet.

or fire wood. Heat the oven to 425°, toss in a bit of olive oil, a little salt and pepper, on a rimmed baking sheet, roast, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 15 to 20 minutes, and then add a couple tablespoons balsamic vinegar, along with 1 packed tablespoon brown sugar. Toss again, and you’ll forget you thought those carrots didn’t taste like a thing.

Or apples.  I had 4 boring Granny Smiths that were beginning to soften and shrivel. I put 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter in a saute pan and peeled and sliced the apples. When the pan was warm and the butter melted, I added the apple slices, along with 1 packed tablespoon brown sugar and a generous half teaspoon of apple pie spice. Had the apples been even more boring than they were, I’d have added the juice of half a lemon. Stir fry over medium-high until the apples soften. Technically, these are fried apples, but I choose to ignore that. They are wonderful. Apple pie without the crust and ice cream.

Now all I have to do is clean off the cat hair and dog spit so I can go to choir without smelling like a pet shop.

Cat in search of padding

Category:

Exercise, Fruit, good food, healthy cooking, vegetables, Weight loss

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40 pounds!!!!

At last! It’s taken since Sept. 9 to lose two darn pounds, and it’s not that I’m  close to the finish line.  At this rate, I’ll need a year and a half to lose the remaining 18 pounds!

My rational left brain — something I picture as a dried walnut meat rattling in an empty gourd — says, So what? You’re planning/hoping to live that long. What’s wrong with getting steadily healthier/fitter?

My hysterical right brain — I see it as a simmering mess of purple plums — says, What?! Not eating everything that’s not nailed down and feeling droopy forEVER?!

Then the left brain whispers in a husk-like rattle, But DO you feel any better after eating all that junk?

If I’m lucky, this endless internal dialog is so exhausting I have to go to bed. Which is what I did Thursday night, which is why I was up early enough Friday morning to see this blood-orange sunrise. Five minutes later and everything was gray. Three hours after that, sunny and clear. Go figure.

Mrs. St. Clair had Limbertwig, Arkansas Black and Golden Delicious apples at the Harmony Farmer’s Market yesterday afternoon, so I made appleesauce for Sunday dinner with David, Beryl and Fay. Big mistake. The 16 or so antique Arkansas Blacks and Limbertwigshave tons of flavor but almost no juice. Peeling, coring and slicing required hands of steel, and I probably added three

Dixie St. Clair with some really firm Arkansas Black apples

cups of water to the simmering sauce to keep it from sticking and scorching.

Ordinarily, making applesauce is the simplest of processes. I like to make bunches at this time of year and freeze for holiday dinners. But after the cleaving and simmering (with a cinnamon stick, of course) issues, the 20-some-year-old blender decided to die. If only I’d bought the immersion blender at last Saturday’s Wade’s Mill cooking class in Raphine, Va., as was recommended. 

Since I didn’t, I was stuck with trying to make a smooth sauce in the food processor which was not cool. I did as best I could (nobody will doubt that it’s homemade), added 2/3 cup of sugar to my approximately 1 quart of sauce back in the pot, stirred to dissolve the sugar over low heat, added 1 teaspoon vanilla, tossed the cinnamon, refrigerated the sauce and went to bed. Not fun.

More often than not, I enjoy cooking. Hope the pumpkin macaroni and cheese with toasted walnuts goes more smoothly this morning.

Last of soybean leaves at Harve Hollar's old dairy barn

Category:

good food, healthy cooking, Seasonal food, Weight loss

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