When a recipe goes wrong, be open to the result!

Well this isn't actually a picture of the soup I made, it looks almost exactly like it. The other day I set out to make vegetarian chili... but my ended up making a three bean soup that tasted disturbingly like minestrone soup! (I love minestrone... so its okay with me) I will definitely make it again, and maybe next time I will throw in some whole wheat pasta and squash/zucchini! In spite of my "mistake" (which turned out to work out for the best), I did create something quick, easy, healthy, and vegetarian!

You can make it too:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 Large can diced tomatoes (if you want you can buy the kind with basil)
Sliced carrots
Chopped green pepper
Sliced onion
1 small can cannelloni (white kidney) beans
1 small can chick peas (garbanzo beans)
1 small can black beans
Cayenne
Paprika
Salt and Pepper

Put the olive oil in a medium-hot pot and add sliced onions (I slice mine quite thin). Add sliced carrots and green peppers 2-3 minutes after. Let this mixture saute until they begin to appear soft. Add cayenne and paprika to taste. Add the tomatoes and fill the large can halfway full with water, add it to the pot. Add all of the beans. Simmer for 20 minutes with lid on pot. Add S&P to taste. Let cool!

If you wanted to make a true mock minestrone, you might add squash and zucchini (sliced) to the saute at the last second so that it becomes soft. Add a whole can of water (or stock) so that it has less of a stew consistency. Add some whole wheat shells or penne for the last 10/15 minutes.

Remember, this recipe makes a LOT of food, but it is really healthy and sits well in the fridge. I love food like this as leftovers!

But I eat the same thing every day!!!

A couple comrades have graciously reminded me I abandoned this blog... and I responded, but I make the same thing every week! My lentils, peas, and spinach recipe (which was recently enhanced with mushrooms and broccoli!) and my veggies primavera. Perhaps this isn't a completely honest response...

Recently I fell in love with fresh okra. Quarter it, simmer it with diced, canned tomatoes (sprinkle on some cayenne if you like heat) for 20 minutes, and put it in the fridge over night. The next day add black beans. What a delicious southwest inspired stew!

The other night, while on the phone with a dear friend Amy, I decided to experiment with cooking. We were talking about food, which made me hungry, and rather than eat (I don't care to eat before bed) I decided to make a delicious entree I could take to work the next day. Behold: Banana Curry.

Ingredients: Red bell pepper, carrots, frozen broccoli (I was desperate people... i.e. fresh would be better!), banana, and a pre-made yellow curry sauce from Trader Joes.

Stir fry the first three ingredients with a little evoo (extra virgin olive oil) until the broccoli is not longer frozen and seems to have a little give (if you were using fresh, look for it to become a BRIGHT green... you'll notice the difference). Add the sliced banana and continue to sautee
until it looks a little soft. Finally, add a half cup of the curry sauce and some cayenne (optional) and let that simmer for a minute or two. Eat while its hot, or stick it in the fridge... it was delicious cold!

Finally: Fruit with balsamic. I live for strawberries. I cut them up and serve with sliced peaches. Sprinkle with balsamic and kosher sea salt. Yummy! Sweet and tart, my favorite.

The moral of the story: I take my small recipes and inventions for granted. In reality, most of my recipes are versions of something similar with a little different sauce here, some different veggies there. However, that doesn't mean my small strides in solo cuisine should be ignored. Variations, and breaking with the routine, are the spice of life! So go out and shake it up! You'll appreciate you did.

Black Beans and Rice

I've been eating a lot of this stuff lately. It's really cheap, really quick, and really filling. It keeps pretty well in the fridge (at least for a few days) and can go with lots of main courses. Plus, it's so versatile you have lots of room for experimentation to see what you like.

Example recipes: (1) (2) (3) (4)

Here are the basics:

• 1 1/2 cups rice (long grain, short grain, white, brown, whatever you fancy)
• 3 cups water
• 1 Tbs olive oil
• 1 white onion
• 1 can (12 oz.) black beans
• 1 Tbs cumin
• 1 Tbs cayenne

In medium saucepan, bring water to boil and add rice; cover. Cook rice until all water is absorbed, about 20 minutes. I have a rice cooker, which is probably the most used and widely appreciated appliance in our apartment. If you don't, and have trouble getting rice to come out well (like I did), check out this article for some tips. 

While rice is cooking, heat oil in medium skillet over medium-high heat. Saute onion until soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add black beans, cumin and cayenne and simmer on medium-low heat, stirring occasionally. When bean mixture has reduced slightly, spoon rice overtop and mix in with a spatula. I usually get about 3 or 4 servings out of this, although we take larger portions.

Other ideas:

• 1 package firm tofu - bread with some flour and spices (I like some cumin, pepper, and sage) and fry, then add to bean mixture for some extra protein
• 1 tomato, diced
• whatever spices you want to use up

Enjoi.

Lentils: An (often) Untapped Treasure

One word: Lentils. My story began when I bought them pre-cooked in a nice big bag, which, conveniently, can sit on you fridge shelf for months until you are ready to eat them. Tonight, while looking into my fridge and trying to decide what to eat for dinner I saw the following things: broccoli, pre-sliced carrots, and lentils. So I decided to experiment and pulled them out, put the pot on the stove and put in the steamer rack (an unbelievably wonderful contraption for steaming veggies - an essential if you don't already have it!), and then put the sauce pan on the stove. I added the carrots with a smidge of olive oil, put the broccoli in the pot, and pulled some frozen peas and spinach out of the freezer. Finally, out of the pantry came a pre-made sauce called Trader Joes Punjab Spinach. After the carrots sizzled for a while, I added the peas. Allowing them a few moments to de-thaw, I then added the spinach. Once everything looked clearly un-frozen (make sure the spinach isn't in frozen lumps), I added about half the jar of punjab sauce. While giving the concoction a few moments to heat up, I attempted to open the bag of lentils (surprisingly difficult!) and then added half the bag. Once the lentils heated up, I was done! And what had I created? A delicious, healthy, quick entree or side dish. And, I'm happy to say, I had lots of leftovers, but the reality is you can make as much or little of this as you want. I ate my lentils with the steamed broccoli mixed in - but you could eat it on top of whatever you wanted. Yummmmmm!

The point I am trying to make is that, as a solo chef, I have the flexibility to experiment because the only poor soul who has to eat my potential disasters or masterpieces is me! So take the time to cook alone, and try mixing some ingredients you think might complement each other. Remember, if it doesn't work, don't worry about it (and don't be embarassed). You're alone, but that gives you an unprecedented chance to take risks, so go for it!

An additional comment on friendly freezers...

Although one of my goals was to make meals perfectly proportioned for one, I have an exception... if I am making a food that I know I will want for dinner the next day, or later on in the week, there is no harm in making extras to put in the refrigerator or the freezer. For example: Veggies with Pesto. I love veggies with pesto on them! And I have no qualms about making extras for a meal later in the week. Pesto with Veggies also freezes well! Another great freezer item is Split Pea Soup. In fact, if you google "food that freezes well" or "recipes that freeze well" you will find a plethora of ideas! So remember, if you like the food so much you might just want to eat it again the next day, go ahead and make extra (because it does make it a little easier to shop - for example if you are buying pre-packaged veggies).

Veggies with Pesto:

Pre-heat skillet to medium-high. Chop into small equally(ish) sized pieces: 1 bell pepper (red/yellow), carrots, and broccoli florets. Slice mushrooms (or buy pre-sliced). Add bell pepper, carrots, and broccoli to skillet with a little olive oil and sauté until broccoli is bright green. Add mushrooms and continue cooking until mushrooms begin to soften. Add frozen peas to taste. Finally, add home-made or pre-made (I like it from Trader Joes) pesto! Continue cooking until peas are warm and pesto is evenly distributed.

Serve warm as an entrée or eat with chicken breast.

Put leftovers into tupperware container and freeze or stick in fridge.

8 Simple Rules for Shopping for One

Faced with the concept of living with 3 other roommates, last year I thought that I would be cooking large meals on a regular basis, and so my buying habits were skewed towards quantity and value. However, it soon became apparent that although we were all under the same roof, our dining habits were often not aligned at all, and so a lot of the time I only cooked for myself and perhaps one other person. Watching a lot of fresh produce go bad can be a traumatic experience, especially when you suddenly discover the moldy culprit a month or two down the road of decay. Not fun. So over time I've learned how to correct this.

1) Go for quality, not quantity

This is more important than you would think, especially as a college student, and it's taken me a while to reach this conclusion myself. I recently read In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, written by Michael Pollan (amazon), where Pollan makes a big case for shopping around for higher quality produce and stepping away from processed foods. Besides being a healthy option, this helps you regulate the amount of food you buy (since it's more expensive) and gets you away from those weird impulse purchases that tend to sit around and get gross.

2) The freezer is your friend

One of my roommates loves freezing things. Butter, meat, leftovers, peanut butter, et cetera. For a while I didn't really understand it, but I'm coming around. A lot of people don't really give the freezer credit - it's really great at preserving a huge variety of foods - perfect for those leftover raw meats (or veggies) that you can't use right away. Just make sure that, if you can, you let the foods thaw out naturally, rather than throw them in the microwave and zap them back to life, which can partially cook the food prematurely.

3) Dried foods: not just for camping anymore

Not that they ever were. But nuts, pasta, dried fruit, rice and beans - these are things that most likely will never go bad on you. I mean, you would have to really shun them, for a period of maybe a year or two, to see that relationship go sour. They're so forgiving and rather needless. Really, what's not to like. Sure, they can sometimes be pushovers, and you feel kind of guilty for using them so often... but it feels so good to do it! I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, besides to say that you should always have rice and beans on hand. You vegetarians already know this.

4) Plan for single meals

If you think you'll make mashed potatoes, get one russet and maybe a few reds. Do not buy that 10lb bag of Idaho potatoes just because all those brightly colored arrows saying "best value" are pointing towards it. They will sprout up like a forest before you can use half of them. This applies to fruits and veggies too. Don't go to the supermarket and buy a bag of carrots, a head of lettuce, a few bell peppers, and a bag full of tomatoes, unless you want to have salad for every meal for every day for a week. You will get sick of it, or they will go bad and you will just get plain sick. Try to pick out a few recipes you want to try in a week, plan your purchases around that, and improvise in between with simple things like pasta and leftovers.

5) Pasta, the great eliminator

Most likely, even if you plan on just cooking for yourself, you'll end up with leftoevers. Normally these will probably sit in your fridge and you'll keep putting off eating them because they don't look that appetizing sitting in that tupperware covered with a wet piece of saran-wrap. But. I can almost guarantee that whatever you made, it would probably go well in/with a pasta dish. This is why it's good to always have pasta on hand. You can mix it with whatever you have on hand, throw in a few spices, and voila. Possibly nontraditional, yes. But you'd be surprise what can taste good.

6) Tupperware in the 21st century

I don't really know much about tupperware, or the various options available now, but I really need some. And you probably do to. It's a great way to keep things fresh and is much easier to organize than the current unlabeled-freezer-bag regime that I currently have going.

7) A biased look at tofu

A recent vegetarian convert, I've become well-aware of all that tofu can do for you. For one thing, it's really easy to shop for, considering there is really only one variety (at least, in the cheap-o supermarkets I frequent). The best thing and worst thing about tofu is that it really has no flavor of its own. Whatever you cook it in, that is what the tofu will be. This makes it simultaneously very flexible and very difficult. Because unless you have a good variety of spices, you'll be sick of it pretty quickly. Some other great features of tofu:

• doesn't really spoil like other foods (to my knowledge)
  
• very easy to portion
  
• quick to prepare (in fact, often times needs no cooking)
• can be used for jenga blocks
  

8) Things you get in bags in the freezer are generally good

This really applies only to supermarkets; I make no safety claims about anything that's been sitting in your freezer for got knows how long. Frozen veggies and fruits are great Hail Mary's that you can pretty much throw in at any point to balance out your dinner. Plus you can regulate how much you use and save the rest really easily.

One last word of advice: befriend other cooks. That way, you can still make reasonably-sized portions of recipes and have somebody else to share it with! Meals are much better as social events, and even though this blog is tailored towards telling you how to cook for yourself... if you can, try to spread the wealth. And invite us?

My first mistake was amateur...

I admit, my first mistake was an amateur one to be sure. I bought two heads of lettuce. While this doesn't sound like a catastrophe of epic proportions, it is a mistake that was common last year and caused me to waste a LOT of food. I just didn't realize how big heads of red leaf lettuce are! (I am trying to change my ways - I used to buy pre-packed, washed lettuce)

The solution?... I need to remember to go with less and remember that Schnucks, the equivalent to Safeway, is just a short bicycle ride away. Next time I will buy fewer bananas and just one large head of lettuce - because while losing $.75 per head of wasted lettuce doesn't seem like a big deal, it can add up quickly.

My second mistake was equally disappointing... I breaded the chicken wrong. The last time I was in San Diego my grandmother made delicious chicken. When I asked her how she did it she said she put a little milk on it and flour and baked it at 350 F for 40 or 50 minutes. I tried to repeat this last night, but failed to recall that her chicken had skin while mine was skinless... and while my chicken remained moist, the breading was unfortunately soggy and icky. Next time: a little crushed cereal or oatmeal. (Or buy chicken breasts with the skin still on)

The good news: my immediate mistakes are not immensely discouraging. I see myself cooking a lot more this semester solely because I like knowing what I am eating, and eating what I like. Plus, being able to feed and satisfy yourself is just a good skill to have...