Ypsi Cooks

Oh my. I haven’t felt this way about a food in some time. And I definitely haven’t felt this way about a salad, maybe ever. It has been my lunch two days in a row, and if it weren’t for my super husband turning the other 4 cups of garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas) into lovely hummus, I’d be eating it right now.

It all started last week when I decided to make this wonderful gabanzo bean salad (with a double quantity of finely chopped arugala instead of  herb,s because that’s what I had) for a lovely little Easter Monday dinner with friends. I cooked up a lot of beans. I made a lot of salad. I ate the leftovers with lettuce, vinaigrette and blue cheese for lunch the next day. I ate plain beans, greens, vinegarette and blue cheese then next day, and today. And I want more. Now. But alas, there are no cooked beans in the house. Maybe tomorrow?

The Vinaigrette (check out my very specific recipes)

I’m sure there are a lot of dressings that would be good on this, but I’m partial to this one: equal parts white wine vinegar & good olive oil, a fair spoonful of mustard (perhaps this amazing tarragon-dijon that ended up in my Easter basket via Everyday Wines Marquette), and a pinch of salt. Shake to blend.

Yummy Lunch Salad

• 1 cup (ish) garbanzo beans (if using canned, omit the salt from the vinaigrette)
• several large handfuls of lettuce (from the garden!!!)
• 2-3 Tbsp blue cheese, crumbled (if gluten free is important to you, please check the cheese)
• 2-3 Tbsp vinaigrette (see above)

Layer the container with the beans and dressing on the bottom, cheese and lettuce on top. Store in fridge until ready to eat (or until the appointed time comes, depending on your place of employment). Hold the container’s lid securely, flip upside-down and do a little shake-dance, because you’re about to have a great lunch. Return to upright. Enjoy!

The kids’ school had their Easter party on Thursday (annoying to us because we’re still trying to be in the throes of lent, but oh well). A few time one Wednesday, and then again right before bed, Eli requested “chocolate chip cookies in Easter shapes.” At that time, I didn’t take time to explain how drop cookies and rolled cookies are different, and the one is not easily used for the other. However, I did do a little research and found some yummy chewy oatmeal cutout cookies that, with a few springy sprinkles, seemed like they’d be perfect for the job. With just a few tweaks, we had a super, spring time cookie. Eli reports that all of his classmates liked them, “Except Ben. He didn’t even like the dipped in cool-whip, but he did like chips in cool-whip.”  I’m pretty sure that means Ben’s has questionable taste.

It’s hard to see the spinkles in this photo, but they’re there, I swear. The kids are super excited about them.

*We’ve been out of vanilla for a while, so I keep subbing in various zests. These cookies are lovely with orange, but I’d bet they’d be great with lemon, almond or vanilla.

Chewy Oatmeal Cutouts from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking via Shiny Cooking

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs, room temp
• 2 Tsp orange zest (or lemon, or vanilla extract, or 1/2 tsp almond extract)1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 2 c (10 oz)flour (could probably replace more of it with whole wheat)
• 1/2 cup (2 1/4 oz) of regular or white whole wheat flour
• 1 cup oats (4 oz) lightly ground in the blender (blending makes the cookies much easier to cut and give them a finer texture)
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp ginger
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/ tsp salt
• egg white for egg wash, if desired

Cream butter, sugar and zest (if using) until light and fluffy, scraping down occasionally to make sure butter and sugar are fully incorporated (3 min.). Beat in extract (if using) eggs one at a time (1 min.) again, scraping down for full incorporation.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Add dry ingredients to the butter/sugar mixture and beat at a low speed until dough forms a ball. Press dough into 2 disks, wrap in a cereal bag (or cellophane or whatnot)  and refrigerate at least a half hour, 1 or more is better. Preheat oven to 350*. Roll out one disk a scant 1/4 inch thick and cut into desired shapes. Transfer cookies to baking sheets (I put silpat on mine, but I’m not sure it’s necessary). If desired, whisk egg white with 1 tsp of water. Brush a thin coat of egg wash on the cookies and decorate as desired (SPRINKLES!!!!). Bake for 9-11 minutes. Gather scraps and re-refridgerate. Repeat rolling process for second disk. Re-roll scraps, and repeat cut-out process, or cut into diamonds. Remember, rolling cookie dough more than twice may result in tough cookies.

Luckily at our home garden we haven’t had many pest problems. At our annex garden we have. My parents house is surrounded by a few hundred acres of woodlands for animals of all sorts to live in. Deer, raccoon, turkey, opossum, skunks, bugs, birds, it is all there. Last summer I watched a flock of wild turkey walk into the garden and hang out with the watermelons. They ate some bugs, enjoyed the freshly turned dirt and then left. A couple years ago we had pole beans decimated by deer, and last year had our corn ravaged by raccoons. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s that time of year again. Time to get dirty.

Our tomatoes, broccoli, eggplant, and cabbage are all popping up, reaching for the flourscent lights, and the garlic in the garden is peaking out from the leaf cover. We are getting ready to plant our potatoes, peas, and onions in the upcoming weeks.

Last year we had a great time and grew a ton of food (more accurately about a quarter ton). I attempted to weigh and keep track of how much, but after a while it just gets old. According to my notes from last year we stopped counting at 132 lbs of tomatoes, 32lbs of watermellon, 20lbs of eggplant, 8 ice cube trays of basil pesto, 35lbs of cucumbers, 18lbs of green beans. And the list goes on. Read the rest of this entry »

I feel quite confident that if needed, I could come up with a new recipe for Oatmeal every month, what with Fudge Nut Bars, Turkish spice cookies,  overnight oatmeal (which recently got gussied up with home jarred peaches!), and how could I forget oatmeal pancakes. Needless to say, there’s a lot of oatmeal in our repertoire. With that, it’s not shocking to find that we have consumed most of the 50lbs of oatmeal I bought last March (buying a whole bag meant that we got it for about $.55/lb and we haven’t had to go back to fill up our sad little containers). Some of this was used in the occasional search for a good, homemade granola bar recipe. We’ve tried many different techniques, and none of them have done it for me: too sweet, too crumbly, too complicated, too hard, too expensive.

Reading a recipe for “Chewy Walnut Trail Bars” on another blog I felt invigorated to try again, so I checked out a few other new recipes, and decided on my tweaks. 3 batches later**, I feel very confident of what has become our go-to granola bar. This recipe is definitely not too sweet, and, if you have a food processor, very easy to make. It’s still a little crumbly (I’ve been meaning to add an egg to the goo, but haven’t yet [editor's note: tried the egg and the bars become cakey... not what I was looking for]), a little bit spicy, and has plenty of room for improvisation.

Read the rest of this entry »

I just read this post at Dinner A Love Story about anticipation. She lays out how we have lost so many opportunities for anticipation in everything from food to phone calls. Her readers point out other losses, including having to wait for the Christmas Special. “Back in the day” TV specials came when they came, and if you missed it, as I often did, you had to wait until it came around again next year. Our kids don’t have to wait for much. They don’t even have to wait for 10AM to see sesame street. But this is one of the advantages of the garden that I pondered as Eli has helped plant peas in mid-March. He won’t even begin to see the results for 2 weeks when the first little sprouts peek out their heads. The good stuff doesn’t happen until mid-May, when I stop double checking to make sure they’re eating their vegetables, because the vines are picked clean every day. For this house, cucumbers only come when it’s hot, or when you’re at grammy’s. And while they’re always excited when someone serves strawberries, our kids recognize the ones from the farmers market (or better yet, the you-pick place) are in a whole different league.

But frankly, vegetables are not in their minds right now. Right now, the focus is Christmas. Today we light the third advent candle, and… it’s PINK! Gaudete! Joyous Sunday! The time is near. Or near-er, anyway. Last year was the first year Eli’s head wrapped around the idea of the advent candles. Every day for a week he wanted us to light a second candle. We finally thought to say, “We can’t light the second candle until we see it lit at church.” We could practically see a little light bulb switch on: this is going to take a while. And it did, and Christmas came, and we celebrated the birth of Jesus, and we tried to do more nice things to bring Him into the world just a little more. And we ate a lot of food. And we opened presents. And we enjoyed time with family and friends. And a few days later, we opened the seed catalog and asked what we should plant this year. “PEAS!” Let the anticipation begin.

Years ago (I’m pretty sure it was the summer before 9^th grade, maybe 8^th) we went to a wedding “Down South.” This was the kind of wedding where cake and punch is served in the church gathering area immediately following the morning service, then, after wishing the couple well, all go on their merry way. All that is, except for out of town guests and immediate family: they go back to mom’s or grandma’s for a nice little luncheon. It was at this luncheon that my father spied the sweet potatoes and promptly avoided them. Moments later, my mother spied those same sweet potatoes and piled her beautiful china luncheon plate high with them. At the table, she took a bite, then insisted my father try them. Was this a cruel joke? My father is not a fan of sweet potatoes. She insisted, he relented and was shocked. Not sweet potatoes at all; rather sweet, buttery, horseradish carrots. To my father’s mind, what could be better than that? Fast-forward a solid 8, maybe 10 years and my mother was still scouring cookbooks at garage sales looking for a recipe. All of a sudden it dawned on her, we ate these carrots in Alabama, maybe the recipe would be in a Southern cookbook. She picked up the book right in front of her, and low and behold, Horseradish-Glazed Carrots.

You must know, she tweaked the recipe a bit. As in, she halved the butter and honey and doubled (or more) the horseradish. But here’s the thing about horseradish: it looses its spiciness fast. As in, 6 months after opening the kick is almost gone. So, my advice, if using just opened, hold back on the horseradish a bit, and if you’ve got a jar that’s been hanging around awhile, pile it on. Enjoy!

Horseradish Carrots

(This dish reheats beautifully which is why it will be on the Thanksgiving table in Midland tomorrow, along with pumpkin-pie brioche rolls that are cooling on the counter as I type.)

• 1 lb carrots, sliced on the diagonal
• 2 T butter
• 2 T honey
• ¼ cup horseradish (more or less, depending on freshness and to taste)
• Salt, to taste

Cook the carrots to just shy of desired tenderness (some people like to team, some boil, some microwave: use your fave method). I like mine to be fairly tender, but with a bit of firmness left. Drain. Add remaining ingredients and stir until melted and combined. Adjust quantities as needed. Serve immediately, cover and keep warm, or chill and reheat for later. Easy-peasy!

This was my moms rule for every food: two bites every time, whether you like it or not. Now we enforce the same rule with our children (though she doesn’t, but that’s another story). And that is how Eli came to love Moroccan stew. Well, that and garbanzo bean races with Uncle Abe… Maybe the golden raisins had something to do with it? Anyway, the recipe came from my mom, and it’s now a Ypsi-Cook family favorite, so much so that I made 2 HUGE batches in order to store some for the winter. With a little reheated frozen brown rice, I’m looking forward to those no-cook/just a little bit of cleaning nights.

Moroccan Vegetable Stew

Serve with brown rice, millet or cous-cous (not GF). The vegetable suggestions (especially the quantities) are suggestions, really. But do be sure to include something orange (carrot, sweet potato, winter squash cubes), and make the pieces small enough for a comfortable bite.

Ingredients:

• Oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 tbsp curry powder (or 1 tsp turmeric, 1/4 tsp ea. ginger, garlic, mustard, coriander seed)
• 1 15 oz can garbanzo beans (or 2 cups cooked)
• 1 14 oz can diced or crushed tomatoes (or 2-3 cups chopped fresh tomatoes)
• 2 lg carrots, sliced fairly thick on the diagonal
• 1 medium zucchini quartered lengthwise and sliced (I often sub green beans, and in the summer, I use both)
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 c. golden raisins
• salt & pepper to taste

Heat a large skillet on medium high heat. Add oil to enough for a thin film. Add onion and a little salt and sauté until the onions have gained a little color. Add spices and stir for about 30 seconds, until fragrant. Add garbanzo beans, tomatoes and carrots. Heat to boiling, stirring occasionally and cook until carrots are mostly tender, about 5 min. Lid if necessary. Add zucchini (and/or green beans), garlic and raisins and cook for about 5 min until zucchini is tender. Season to taste & serve over grain or potato of choice. Enjoy.

Tonight we noticed that we had downy mildew on the basil we picked. Looks like I am making 20+ plants of worth of pesto tomorrow. I think I will need to get more ice cube trays at the dollar store.

Summer harvest is in full swing now, though the cool weather over the past week has caused it to slow down. We have been rolling in peaches and tomatoes. We put up a bushel via freezing/canning/drying and are probably going to get another tomorrow.