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Posts from the ‘Vegetarian (or vegetarian option)’ Category

Jun 11

Snap pea, radish, mozzarella salad in Le Parfait (with a wine pairing!)

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On Sunday, I taught my last class before starting my summer hiatus. We have grand travel plans this summer, and who wants to be in a hot kitchen on a beautiful summer evening, anyway? Thinking about summer brings back memories of waddling around a kitchen last summer, hugely pregnant, teaching from a stool and trying to avoid picking up my heavy tubs of equipment and groceries. Ha! So glad that’s not me this time around. Instead, I’ll be cooking over a camp stove, eating dinner from a picnic table, and happily lugging around 22+ pounds of purely adorable baby chub in a hiking pack.

Before we head out on our adventure, I want to share with you a perfect summer recipe from this last class – it doesn’t require any heat, and packs perfectly for picnics or lunches or backyard barbecues. The class was a collaboration with my friends over at Table Wine, with special gifts from the French jar company Le Parfait. We put together a beautiful, summery salad of farmers’ market snap peas and radishes with torn fresh mozzarella, dressed with lemon and sesame and garnished with chive blossoms from Vitruvian Farms, and paired it with a lovely Italian white wine (more on that, below).  Read more

May 25

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Grilled radicchio with fresh mozzarella and garlic vinaigrette

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Two days ago we came back from a weekend trip to Pennsylvania for a wedding, and – just like that – it’s summer. We’ve eaten every meal since on the porch, and one of our first tasks when we returned was to exchange our long-faulty propane tank and fire up the grill for our standby summer dinner menu – a mess of grilled vegetables, some sort of starch (in this case, a quinoa pilaf), cheese (we do live in Wisconsin, after all), and white wine (Trader Joe’s new boxed sauvignon blanc is actually quite fantastic).

But lately I’ve had that itch – the one that drives me to pick out random things at the grocery store and try something entirely new – and this time it was (among other things) a small round head of radicchio that called out to me. I planned a slaw at first, but a quick perusing of cookbooks during Aldo’s pre-dinner nap led me to grill it in wedges. I made a quick vinaigrette (more on that later) and tossed it all with some fresh mozzarella and herbs, and it was an excellent part of what can otherwise be a fairly standard meal.  Read more

Apr 18

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Sweet potato muffins for littles (or bigs)

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It comes as a surprise to no one, especially me, that Aldo starting to eat solid foods has been one of the most rewarding and fun parts of this whole ordeal. (Can you call having a baby and raising it for nearly eight months an “ordeal”? That seems simultaneously too negative and way too casual. Like I’d need at least 10,000 more words to describe what it’s like, but a decent percentage of them would be way more positive than “ordeal.”)

Also unsurprisingly, a lot of people ask me what he’s eating and what our general philosophy is on how and what he eats. Baby led weaning? Homemade? How quickly to introduce allergens? What to introduce and when? The way we’ve gone about it is a fairly good indicator for how we’ve done most things as parents – do some reading, pick and choose the elements we like to form a generalized plan, then see what works and what doesn’t, reformulating the plan nearly on a dime as needed. If there’s anything I’ve learned it’s that you can’t go into anything with too many expectations or being too rigid, because this fantastic little guy is actually a human, and he has plenty of his own thoughts and preferences.

And through everything (and we’re not just talking about food here, but also sleep, and play, and everything else he does), I get more and more of this sense that he’s going to be just fine. We can provide a general structure, but as long as we go with our intuition and take note of the signals he sends us, it’ll all work out okay. Read more

Jan 1

Warm French lentil salad, a lesson in boosting flavor

(It took me over a week to get this post written and posted. Since then, the year has changed! Happy 2016 and here’s to a delicious new year!)

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how I thought life would change with a little one in the house. I figured we wouldn’t get much sleep (and we’re actually doing much better on that front than I would have expected), that we wouldn’t be able to get out of the house that easily (and in the winter, that’s mostly fine with us anyway), and that we wouldn’t be in control of our daily schedules nearly as much (true more than I predicted). But I hadn’t really thought about how much more difficult it would be to cook, especially healthy meals, and how difficult it might be to get moving on a daily basis. Pre-baby we had a pretty solid exercise routine – gym, run, or yoga 7+ times/week – and while our diets were sometimes a bit indulgent, we primarily cooked meals from scratch and prepared a lot of vegetables.

But with baby, all of that has changed. We rely on takeout and quick meals much more than expected, especially considering evenings are the main time the three of us have together. We’re making an effort to turn that around, but some days it’s easier than others. Aldo is happiest rolling around on the floor with a pile of toys and an attentive parent or two, and he usually only lasts in a seat in the kitchen for 15 minutes or less – generally not enough time to get a healthy meal together.

But a few days ago, with Brett working from home during the day as sort of an ersatz Winter Break, I took advantage of a bit of energy and quiet time to pull together a healthy lunch of items we had in the fridge and pantry – French lentils tossed with mire poix and a mustard vinaigrette, topped with fresh parsley and some crumbled feta.

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Oct 9

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Spicy black bean burgers (All Whisked Up swap)

We’re six weeks into this crazy adventure with little Aldo and have yet to do much in the way of real cooking (or, to be honest, it’s me who has yet to be cooking much – Brett’s doing a great job of keeping me fed!). So I’m glad I decided to participate in Whisk‘s first recipe swap, which encouraged me to pick out and make something new from one of our other member sites. It’s particularly good I picked the recipe I did, since a bit of a rough patch for baby means I’m on a partial elimination diet while we figure out what’s causing his problems, and this one worked for my current dietary restrictions (no dairy, avoiding soy).

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I was matched to Whisk member Tattooed Foodie, a site out of Eau Claire by “moderately tattooed food enthusiast” Kyle Lato. She has a great selection of straightforward comfort food – like spicy turkey beer chili, one pan chicken and couscous, skillet breakfast pizza (such a great idea), and caramel apple cheesecake bars (which is initially what I picked but it’s good I switched to these excellent black bean burgers, since I unexpectedly had to cut out dairy). I chose to make Kylie’s spicy black bean burgers, which made two great weeknight dinners for us. I’ve been looking for a good vegetarian burger patty for a long time, as well as something else to do with the big pots of beans we regularly make (this is actually a huge benefit – we often make large quantities of beans, but pairing them with rice or simply eating them with bread and salad can get a little boring). It’s a particularly good recipe to tweak with whatever spices, herbs, and other flavoring elements you might have around the house, especially if you cook the beans from dried (more on that in the recipe below). Read more

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