Recipe Swap Friday–Confetti Kale

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Erin

Thanks for joining us for Recipe Swap Friday! I hope you’re enjoying all these veggie recipes as much as I am. Thanks to all of you who are linking up and sharing your yummy dishes o’ veg.

If this is your first time joining us, we’re swapping veggie recipes to kick off the new year. You can link up to your favorite veggie recipe below, either on your blog or in your Plan to Eat account. If linking up to your Plan to Eat account, just cut and paste the url from the recipe in your recipe book.

Here’s what I brought this week:

This was a great substitute for plain old salad, especially in the middle of winter. And it was super-easy to make.

The folks around our dinner table were just about split on their preference of it–half liked it, half did not. The Pickle spent 15 minutes separating out the peppers and corn (which he liked) from the kale (which he did not like) and then eating them independently. If you’re not a fan of kale then you could substitute a less bitter green. Try spinach, collards, or chard.

A note on the cooking time, I didn’t cook this nearly as long as the instructions say to. Feel free to adjust the cooking time to your preferences.

Plan to Eat users, click on the recipe title to import the recipe into your account.

Confetti Kale

Source: Simply in Season, Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert

Ingredients

6 cups organic kale, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
³⁄₄ cup organic frozen corn, thawed
¹⁄₂ cup organic red bell pepper, chopped
¹⁄₄ cup water
¹⁄₂ tsp salt
¹⁄₄ tsp pepper

Method

In a large frying pan, saute kale and garlic in 2 Tbs of olive oil over medium heat, stirring constantly, for 10 minutes.
Mix in remaining ingredients and cook for 10 minutes. Serve immediately.

Share Your Yummy Veggie Recipe

Rules for Sharing:

This is a sharing post. So…please share.

The rules for sharing are simple: If you take a taste (link from this post to your blog) you should share a taste (link from your blog back to this post).

If you’re linking to a recipe in your Plan to Eat account, you don’t need to bother with “sharing a taste”. Just copy and paste the web address for your recipe from your Plan to Eat account.

How to Get Your Dish Onto the Goodie Table:

I really want this to be easy and accessible to everyone, so leave me a comment if you have trouble. I’ll do my best to help you out. It’s a little bit harder than just setting a bowl of veg on the table, but I promise it’s pretty easy. Just click on the link below that says “Click to view/add link” and follow the directions from there.

Green Bean Salad

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Erin

I really thought this dish would be a big winner with the hungry masses at the dinner table. They like every ingredient in it–green beans? Check. Hard-boiled eggs? Double check. Pickles? Check. So I was really surprised when we had to bribe them with dessert to finish their veggies.

The Sweetie Pie enjoyed his serving, and finished the Pickle’s serving (who decided that having dessert wasn’t worth the price of eating his beans). I’ve come to rely on my nose to “taste” these recipes for me, since my diet restrictions don’t allow me to eat eggs or mayo. My olfactory senses gave it a thumbs up, so I’m not sure what went wrong. But I present it here as a dish that pleased the adults at the table, if not the kiddos.

I came up a little short on mayo and substituted some plain yogurt. It worked great. I don’t think I’d go so far as to substitute all the mayo with yogurt, but if you’re wanting to cut calories, you could get away with swapping out part of it.

I also used my french cut green beans here, since I still had a bag in the freezer. They worked out nicely.

And I chose to use rice vinegar, since the recipe doesn’t specify which vinegar to use. I thought the little bit of sweetness would be a nice addition.

Plan to Eat users, click on the recipe title to import the ingredient list into your account.

Green Bean Salad

Source: More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre (adapted)

Ingredients

3 cups cooked green beans, cut into 1″ pieces
4 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
1 medium organic onion, diced
1 large dill pickle, chopped
2 Tbs vinegar
1 tsp salt
²⁄₃ cup mayonnaise

Method

For instructions, see page 254 in More with Less by Doris Janzen Longacre **

** While it’s technically legal to repost recipes, we don’t feel it’s ethical to post copyrighted recipes from the same source for weeks at a time. I’m providing the ingredient list to use in creating a shopping list. We here at the Plan to Eat blog apologize for any inconvenience. If you don’t already own the cookbook, and don’t wish to buy it, most libraries have a copy on their shelves. Thanks for your understanding.

Very Favorite Black Bean Soup

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Erin

This is one of my very, very favorite recipes. So old and used is it that I can’t even remember where it came from. I know I found it somewhere on the web, but that was ages ago and I have no hope of tracing its roots now.

This soup is a winner on two counts, it’s super-easy to prepare and it’s really, really tasty. Make it a three count winner because it’s also really affordable. Hmmm……actually make it four counts because it makes so much that I can freeze half of it for later (an extra meal in the freezer is a big plus in my kitchen).

I’ll mix up the recipe every now and then depending on what’s in the fridge. I’ll add meat or veggies at whim to use up the odds and ends that are laying around. I often serve it straight from the crock pot, but as you see in the photo I partially pureed this batch since my mom gave me a shiny new immersion blender for Christmas (if I can’t get blogger swag from the companies, at least I can get it from my mom). It’s tasty both ways.

Surely you know that I’m going to encourage you to use your own homemade broth here. I’m starting to feel like I have a soap box. If you still haven’t converted to homemade broth and all its benefits, be sure to check the labels for gluten. Only buy a broth labeled gluten-free.

I always add the vinegar about 10 minutes before serving. This gives it time to incorporate into the soup, but if you add it before the beans are cooked then your beans will be tough.

Plan to Eat users, click on the recipe title to import the recipe directly into your account.

Black Bean Soup

Source: long forgotten

Ingredients

1 pound black beans, dried
1 ¹⁄₂ quarts gluten-free chicken or vegetable broth
1 carrot, chopped
1 stalk organic celery, chopped
1 large organic onion, chopped
1 large organic bell pepper, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
¹⁄₄ cup lentils
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
2 Tbs chili powder
1 Tbs cumin
¹⁄₂ tsp oregano
3 Tbs balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
assorted toppings, if desired (avocado, cheese, sour cream….)

Method

Soak beans overnight in lots of water. In the morning, rinse and re-rinse the beans. Place them in a crock-pot.
Add the remaining ingredients, except for the vinegar. Cook on high for 6 hours.
About 10 minutes before serving, add the vinegar and stir well.
Serve with desired toppings (avocado, cheese, sour cream….)

Homemade Yogurt (With Maple Syrup and Vanilla!)

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Amy @ Progressive Pioneer

We are a yogurt-making family! Where it once seemed wild and crazy to make our own yogurt, making a gallon a week is now just part of my kitchen routine. I originally followed the instructions in Wild Fermentation, except for the heating the milk part. Because we purchase raw milk I like the yogurt to also be raw so we can benefit from all those good raw enzymes plus the healthy probiotics.

I tried a few different techniques, one was heating the milk on the lowest flame on the stove, whisking it constantly, hoping it wouldn’t get too hot. That one works well if you’re vigilant. Don’t worry about a thermometer if you’re trying to keep it raw. I find that if I can comfortably dip my finger in, it hasn’t gotten hot enough to kill the good probiotics. If you’re using pasteurized milk and trying to heat it to a certain temperature, go for the thermometer. A good technique for the easily-distracted is to simply run really hot water in a big silver bowl in the sink and set the jars of milk in it until they are warmed through. About the temperature of a nice hot water bottle you’d take to bed on a chilly evening is just about right.

I tried keeping the jar warm by snuggling it in a cooler surrounded by warm towels, but that didn’t work as well as heating up the crock pot to just over 100, turning it off and keeping the jar in there to do its thing. The thick ceramic pot held the heat really well. And I still cushioned the jar with towels. Lately I’ve had out crock pot going all night long, cooking up big batches of broth. I find that setting the jar of milk near (but not touching!) the hot crock pot keeps it warm enough. Then I don’t have to mess with tucking it in for the night.

I was pleased to discover just how easy making your own yogurt is. Once I got the technique down, it was so simple to incorporate into my weekly routine. It doesn’t take more than ten minutes of hands-on time. All you do is heat up your quart of milk, stir in a tablespoon of yogurt with live cultures (once I had my own, I just saved a bit from each previous batch for the next one) for each quart of milk (four for a gallon).

Then let it sit for about 16-24 hours. The climate in your own house will be unique and you’ll figure out the optimal time for your yogurt. Mine took a little longer than the book said. I usually start it in the evening and let it sit overnight.

Once the yogurt was all thickened up I mixed in a little vanilla and maple syrup to taste.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but it was seriously the best yogurt I’ve ever had! It must be something about the excellent goat milk and not having any additives like stabilizers, gelatin or one-dimensional-tasting sweeteners. While the ingredients were so simple, the taste was complex and delightful. Yogurt making is so simple and delicious, there’s no reason not to do it yourself!

Recipe Swap Friday–Carrot Apple Salad

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Erin

Welcome back to Recipe Swap Friday! I’m loving all these veggie recipes you guys are sharing (especially those veggie dishes that could actually be dessert–yum!)

If you weren’t here last week, we’re giving a nod to healthy-eating in the new year by sharing our favorite veggie recipes. You can link up to your favorite veggie recipe below, either on your blog or in your Plan to Eat account. If linking up to your Plan to Eat account, just cut and paste the url from the recipe in your recipe book.

Hope you guys brought lots more recipes to share! Here’s mine for the week:

Now isn’t that a cheerful salad for a bleak, midwinter dinner table? This salad was a huge hit at our house, with kiddos and grown ups alike. A few of the little ones took issue with the mint in the salad (which I loved) so I guess we’ll leave that out of the next batch.

Once I quit grumbling over having to pull out my food processor, this salad came together in a jiffy. I grated two Granny Smith apples and four carrots. I didn’t really measure the quantity of my carrots and apples, just threw everything in the processor into a mixing bowl, so I think I may have ended up with more veg than the recipe calls for. Even so, this salad was a real winner.

Definitely use fresh lemon and orange juice. The flavors are so much brighter and fresher. And leave out the mint if you’ll be serving sensitive palates.

For those who are following along with our cookbook tour this recipe comes from a companion book to the More with Less cookbook. The recipes in this book have the simplicity of More with Less but use fresh, seasonal ingredients. I’ve been cooking from it for a few years and have found some real winners that I turn to again and again.

Plan to Eat users, click on the recipe title to import the recipe into your account.

Apple Carrot Salad

Source: Simply in Season, Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert

Ingredients

¹⁄₄ cup fresh lemon or lime juice
2 Tbs fresh orange juice
1 Tbs honey
2 cups apple, shredded
2 cups carrots, shredded
1 Tbs fresh mintor 1 tsp dried mint
¹⁄₈ tsp salt or to taste
¹⁄₄ cup raisins

Method

Mix together the juice and the honey. Toss with the apples and coat well (prevents browning). Add the remaining ingredients. Toss well and serve immediately.

Share Your Yummy Veggie Recipe

Rules for Sharing:

This is a sharing post. So…please share.

The rules for sharing are simple: If you take a taste (link from this post to your blog) you should share a taste (link from your blog back to this post).

If you’re linking to a recipe in your Plan to Eat account, you don’t need to bother with “sharing a taste”. Just copy and paste the web address for your recipe from your Plan to Eat account.

How to Get Your Dish Onto the Goodie Table: